7 Ideas to Explore

1. With Taiwan in mind, Chinese military analysts are examining how Putin has deterred Western powers from directly intervening in Ukraine by brandishing nuclear weapons, according to NYT. ''Russia's strategy of nuclear deterrence certainly played a role in ensuring that NATO under the United States' leadership did not dare to directly enter the war,” this newspaper quoted Maj. Gen. Meng Xiangqing of the National Defense University in Beijing as having concluded in a recent article. This conclusion might inform Chinese strategists’ thinking on how to deter the U.S. in the event of a potential invasion of Taiwan, according to NYT.
2. If Russia does deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus, this move won’t change much in NATO’s plans for its eastern flank, according to William Alberque of IISS. “While it is not ideal that Russia [would be] moving its short-range nuclear weapons closer to NATO’s borders, NATO already needs to re-orient its missile defenses toward the east, and improve its capabilities to detect and intercept cruise missiles,” he writes in a commentary for RM. “Such a re-orientation poses huge technological, financial and strategic challenges, but these challenges preceded Russia’s changed nuclear posture,” he writes.
3. Whoever emerges as the Republican candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential elections is more likely to be a Ukraine critic than supporter, according to Bruce W. Jentleson. And that may have some advantages for the GOP, the Duke University professor argues in a commentary for FP. Given margins such as 2020’s less than 1% in Georgia and Wisconsin, if even a few percent of the electorate’s vote is based on Ukraine, the marginal difference could be decisive, according to Jentleson.
4. Is U.S. support for Ukraine costing it ‘peanuts’? According to Timothy Ash of Chatham House, the answer is yes. Ash believes that, were it not for Western military support, Russia might have taken all of Ukraine and continued its military offensive into former Warsaw Pact countries, dramatically altering European security. But Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute disagrees. A prolonged war in Ukraine has dangerous hidden costs—namely, it increases the risk of a “direct Russian-NATO war” and the “use of nuclear weapons,” Parsi said in a recent debate with Ash hosted by Russia Matters and the Middlebury Institute’s Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies.
5. To prevent the loss of its weapons in Ukraine, the United States should institute a mandatory one-for-one swap for the most sensitive of systems, such as Javelins, while also increasing the number of on-site inspections, according to Wesley Satterwhite, U.S. Army Reserve Intelligence Officer and State Department consultant. If on-site inspections are too dangerous, the United States should stipulate end-use monitoring by the Ukrainians themselves, he writes in NI.
6. The West should encourage China to join a concert of outside powers which would consider how best to conduct negotiations on peace between Ukraine and Russia, according to Bloomberg editors. “Given Xi’s leverage over Putin, Chinese involvement will be necessary to reach any durable settlement in Ukraine,” the publication’s editorial staff wrote in an opinion piece entitled “Don’t Dismiss China’s Peacemaking Bid. Harness It.” Chinese involvement in peacemaking will also help the West “gain better insight into Putin’s red lines” while reducing Xi’s incentive to provide Russia with weapons, the Bloomberg editors write.
7. The FSB’s charge of espionage against WSJ journalist Even Gershkovich will make efforts to secure his release particularly difficult, according to NYT. For the Kremlin, the arrest of Gershkovich—who has denied the charges and whose release the White House has demanded—serves multiple purposes, including creating an additional opportunity for swapping prisoners, and signaling that Russia is prepared to take ever more drastic steps in confronting the West. His arrest also means that all foreign journalists in Russia, and by default all foreign nationals, are potentially fair game for Putin and his security services, according to Andrei Soldatov of CEPA.

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:

“Russia's Vladimir Putin Is Stealing Ukraine's Children. What Can We Do?”, Ilya Timtchenko, a graduate student at Harvard Kennedy School, Newsweek, 03.27.23.

• “A report by Yale University researchers ... reveals that the Russian government is operating a systematic network of at least 43 custody centers for the re-education and adoption of at least 6,000 Ukrainian children across Russian-occupied Crimea and Russia. This, along with other crimes against humanity in occupied Ukraine at the hands of Russian soldiers and security officials meets the standard for genocide against the Ukrainian people, as defined by the United Nations.”
• “What can the West do in the face of these atrocities?”
  • “The most obvious solution is to provide support needed to expel Russia from all Ukrainian territory.”
  • “Better data on who is being deported is also needed, along with where they are being sent, and how they are being treated.”
  • “The message that ‘we see what you're doing and will hold you accountable’ must be made clear.”
  • “More support is needed to assist Ukraine's own efforts to track victims, facilitate repatriation, and provide for the physical and mental health of returnees.”
  • “Finally, Ukrainians in Russia need a way out. Mechanisms should be developed to assist escapees — a modern underground railroad to help Ukrainians find refuge in neighboring countries.”

Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“New Weapons Aren’t Enough: The Challenges of Ukraine’s Coming Assault,” Kyiv bureau chief Andrew  Kramer, NYT, 04.03.23.

• “New Western weapons that could prove critical in assaults, like German Leopard 2 tanks and American mine-clearing vehicles, are arriving in Ukraine. Thousands of recruits are training in newly constituted units tailored for offensives. And the military command is holding back elite soldiers from the worst of the fighting in the east, in and around the city of Bakhmut, to throw them instead into the coming campaign.”
• “But ... Ukraine has lost thousands of its most experienced fighters. ... Over the past year, about 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded, according to Western estimates. ... The new Ukrainian campaign, when it comes, will be a test of its army’s ability to re-arm and reconstitute battalions while maintaining the motivation.”
• “Western support has been solid so far but is not guaranteed. The U.S. budget for military assistance, for example, is now expected to run out by around September, and a senior American defense official recently described the latest tranche of artillery rounds and rockets sent to Ukraine as a ‘last-ditch effort.’”
• “‘The key point in the eyes of Washington elites—and Washington elites are the judge and jury on this—is that Ukraine has to be seen as having gained significant land in the coming offensive,’ Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group … said in an interview.”

“How To Benchmark Victory in Ukraine: Western Vagueness About War Aims Is Creating a Risky Vacuum for the Kremlin To Exploit,” Liana Fix of CFR, FP, 03.30.23.

• “Ukraine’s supporters have shied away from defining the outcome they aim to achieve with their aid.... Western ambiguity—leaving open what victory means—made sense in the early phase of the war. ... In the second year, the situation is much less uncertain. Although Ukraine is still targeted by Russian missiles and frontline battles remain unimaginably brutal, the potential trajectories of this war have narrowed. Kyiv will not fall, and Ukraine will not be overrun by the Russian army. Ukraine is also unlikely to lose the territory it has already liberated, as Russia’s unsuccessful winter offensive made clear. But even if there is greater clarity about battlefield contingencies, there is still no strategic clarity about what victory means.”
• “This creates a dangerous political vacuum in the midst of a war that has been, to a great extent, fought by narratives.”
• “To right-size both overly optimistic and overly pessimistic expectations, Ukraine and the West should benchmark an interim victory that is realistic to achieve this year. Instead of giving ambiguous answers to the question of what victory means, Western leaders should state publicly that their aim for this spring and summer is a return at least to the lines before 2022 and that they will supply Ukraine with everything needed to reach this objective.”
• “Of course, a return to the pre-2022 lines is a less satisfactory outcome for Ukraine and its supporters than Russia’s full military defeat or negotiated withdrawal. However, it is a useful, realistic, and clear-to-communicate benchmark. Defining an interim victory this way will help bolster public support in the West and undermine Putin’s objectives at home. It will not be possible to say ‘mission accomplished’ with this outcome. But an interim victory is better than not defining any victory at all.”

“Why the alarm over Russia’s use of hypersonic missiles in Ukraine is misplaced,” Andrew W. Reddie of The Guardian, BAS, 03.31.23.

• “Early in March, news outlets reported that almost a year after Russia first used Kinzhal (Kh-47M2) hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, Moscow had used six more of its hypersonic weapons as part of a particularly severe attack. ... Of note, Ukraine’s theater missile defense could not prevent the six Kinzhal missiles… Perhaps unsurprisingly, this attack led to a substantial increase in reporting about hypersonics … The alarmism captured in this reporting indicates the broader misunderstanding concerning the characteristics of hypersonic weapons.”
  • “The first concerns the ability of the Kinzhal missile to evade Ukraine’s air defenses.”
  • “The second strand of alarmism pertains to the perceived imbalance in hypersonic capabilities between the United States on the one hand and Russia and China on the other—exacerbated perhaps by the apparently close ties between Moscow and Beijing.”
• “Bearing in mind that the primary characteristic of a hypersonic weapon system germane to strategic competition is its maneuverability, which enables it to evade missile defenses, Russia and China’s deployment is perhaps unsurprising given Washington’s focus on developing strategic missile defense (ostensibly focused on North Korea and Iran). If nothing else, the capability represents a hedge against US strategic missile defense systems reaching maturity.”
• “Russia and China do not have a reciprocal focus on missile defense, so there is little that hypersonic weapons would add to the US military’s toolkit that is not already supplied by existing capability.”
• “Rather than focusing on ‘matching’ capabilities and engaging in arms-racing behavior, both analysts and policy-makers ought to focus on the consequences for strategic stability of Moscow and Beijing developing these technologies. For example, there are good reasons to think that future variants of hypersonic weapons might evade existing early warning systems — reducing still further the already limited amount of time that civilian leaders have to order a second strike.”

"America’s Looming Munitions Crisis: How to Fill the Missile Gap," Seth G. Jones of CSIS, FA, 03.31.23.

"America Must Avoid Losing Its Weapons in Ukraine Like It Did in Afghanistan," Wesley Satterwhite of the U.S. State Department, NI, 04.02.23.

• “The United States has given some $34 billion in military assistance to Ukraine … It is time to think about what will happen after the war. Specifically, billions of dollars’ worth of American military equipment will remain in a country rebuilding from war with the possibility of weak institutions, a pro-Russian insurgency, and occupied territories.”
• “What the United States should avoid is a repeat of the Soviet-Afghan War. ...  In the aftermath of that conflict, the United States launched a buyback program to retrieve the estimated 1,000 Stingers that it sent to Afghanistan. The $65 million program was largely seen as a failure. The missiles supplied to the Mujaheddin soon found their way to North Korea, Iran, Qatar, and Tajikistan.”
• “Very little is being done to monitor sensitive weapons. The U.S. embassy in Kiev, which has the U.S. government lead over accountability, isn’t fully staffed nor operational as a result of the war. There is no 1:1 swap for Javelins, as was the case for the Stingers sent to Afghanistan in the 1980s.”
• “Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, and is the second most corrupt nation on the continent after Russia. … At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine was notorious for the illegal arms trade, a result of the massive former Soviet stockpiles in the country. From 1992 to 1998, the country lost $32 billion in military equipment through theft, lack of oversight, and discounted sales.”
• “What the United States should do is increase the number of on-site inspections... n the case that such inspections would be too dangerous, the United States should stipulate end-use monitoring by the Ukrainians themselves Only 10 percent of high-risk weapons have undergone such measures since U.S. aid began. … A one-for-one swap should be mandatory for the most sensitive of U.S. weapons.” 

Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:

"The Dollar Is Our Superpower, and Russia and China Are Threatening It," columnist Fareed Zakariah, WP, 03.24.23.

• “The dollar is America's superpower. It gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle. The United States can slap sanctions on countries unilaterally, freezing them out of large parts of the world economy. And when Washington spends freely, it can be certain that its debt, usually in the form of T-bills, will be bought up by the rest of the world.”
• “Sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine combined with Washington's increasingly confrontational approach to China have created a perfect storm in which both Russia and China are accelerating efforts to diversify away from the dollar. Their central banks are keeping less of their reserves in dollars, and most trade between them is being settled in the yuan. They are also, as Putin noted, making efforts to get other countries to follow suit.”
• “We keep searching for the single replacement for the dollar, and there will not be one. But could the currency suffer weakness by a thousand cuts? That seems a more likely scenario. The author and investor Ruchir Sharma points out, ‘Right now, for the first time in my memory, we have an international financial crisis in which the dollar has been weakening rather than strengthening. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come.’ If it is, Americans should worry. [If] the dollar's unique status … wanes, America will face a reckoning like none before.”

Ukraine-related negotiations:

"Don’t Dismiss China’s Peacemaking Bid. Harness It," Editorial Board, Bloomberg, 03.29.23.

• “The West should encourage continued Chinese engagement, not reject it. … Given Xi’s leverage over Putin, Chinese involvement will be necessary to reach any durable settlement in Ukraine. Even if the belligerents aren’t yet ready to sit down, outside powers should start considering how best to conduct eventual negotiations. One model might be the six-party talks over North Korea’s nuclear program, or the P5+1 grouping that oversaw the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Whatever its exact makeup, any such contact group would have to include both the US and China, as the leading backers of each side.”
• “US and European countries could at least begin discussing such an arrangement with China now, without slackening their arms deliveries to Ukraine. If China balks or makes unrealistic demands — such as an immediate cease-fire that locks in Putin’s land grab — its pretensions as a peacemaker will be exposed.”
• “If China does agree to serious talks, the US might gain better insight into Putin’s red lines. If nothing else, encouraging Xi to see value for China in playing a visible peacemaking role would reduce his incentive to provide Russia with weapons, which would only embolden Putin, prolong the war, and cause greater destruction and bloodshed.”
• “Working together on Ukraine might even open a rare channel of communication between Washington and Beijing, and restore some stability to the rapidly cratering US-China relationship, including over the issue of Taiwan. Trying to stop one war may help the two rivals stave off another, more devastating conflict. That’s an opportunity both sides should welcome.”

“Between Vietnam and Ukraine: Reflections on Ending a War,” former U.S. National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia Paul R. Pillar, NI, 03.29.23.

• “Today’s policy questions regarding the war in Ukraine involve correspondingly delicate and difficult questions about the relationship between Washington and Kyiv and how their interests diverge. There are major differences, of course, between that war and the one in Vietnam, including not only that the United States has not directly involved its own troops but also that Ukraine is led by a legitimate government with much popular support and has been the victim of naked international aggression, rather than the legacy of a partial decolonization. But the ending of this war is again likely to involve the persuasion of a Ukrainian ally as much as the pressure of a Russian adversary.”

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

"Debate: Is US Support for Ukraine Costing ‘Peanuts’ or Too Much?", Timothy Ash of Chatham House and Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, RM, 03.30.23.

• “Western policymakers are asking themselves whether the billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv have been well spent. Two analysts offer opposing assessments in a debate co-hosted by Russia Matters.”
• “Investment strategist and Chatham House fellow Timothy Ash has argued that Vladimir Putin poses such a significant threat to the U.S., the West and the global order that the West has ‘no option but to support Ukraine.’”
  • “Through this conflict we've learned that Russia was an even bigger threat … [to] NATO and the West [than we had thought].”
  • “[Putin] is attacking us [the West] in our system, and it needs stopping.”
  • “Diplomacy is one option, but we tried that. … The Russians didn’t really want to negotiate.”
  • “Problems [associated with the war] are not caused by the West arming Ukraine. These problems are caused by Russia invading Ukraine.”
• “Trita Parsi, executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has contended that a prolonged war in Ukraine has dangerous hidden costs — namely, it increases the risk of a ‘direct Russian-NATO war’ and the ‘use of nuclear weapons.’”
  • “Keeping the war going will increase the risk of a direct Russian-NATO war as well as the use of nuclear weapons.”
  • “The more the war drags on, the more it contributes to the formation of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance.”
  • “The war in Ukraine … solidified the ‘West versus the rest’ configuration of the world.”
  • “’The war has been a disaster for the climate and for the climate agenda’ because it has undermined international collaboration and focus on addressing climate change.”

"Biden’s State Department Needs a Reset," Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University, FP, 04.01.23.

• “Biden administration took office vowing to put diplomacy at the center of U.S. foreign policy, yet it has relatively few diplomatic achievements to show for its first two-plus years.”
• “Part of the problem is the ‘democracy vs. autocracy’ framing that Biden & Co. have embraced. ... It leaves the United States exposed to accusations of hypocrisy, and it doesn’t seem to motivate Washington’s democratic allies very much. Case in point: European leaders keep traveling to Beijing to safeguard their economic interests with (autocratic) China, behavior sharply at odds with the democracy vs. autocracy template. Similarly, the president of (mostly) democratic India, Narendra Modi, just held talks with one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top national security advisors.”
• “’Hold on a minute,’ I hear you say. What about the critical role that U.S. diplomacy played in organizing the Western response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine… On one hand, Biden and his team have led a coordinated Western response to the invasion, and this hasn’t always been easy. But … [t]he cruel reality is that a protracted war that ends with Russia in control of some or all of the Donbass and Ukraine depopulated and heavily damaged will not look like a grand foreign-policy achievement.”
• “The roots of the Ukraine war predate Biden’s inauguration, but neither Biden nor Blinken saw the war coming soon enough. … U.S. officials (both past and present) have gone to great lengths to deny that U.S. or Western policy played any role whatsoever in causing this tragedy, but a dispassionate look at the evidence … shows otherwise. As I’ve put it before, ‘Putin is directly responsible for the war, but the West is not blameless.’”
• “We will probably never know if the war could have been avoided had the United States and its European allies made a more serious and creative attempt to address Russia’s security concerns, and dropped their stubborn insistence that Ukraine would one day join NATO. I’m not letting Russia off the hook for starting a preventive war (an illegal act under international law) or for the way it has waged it. But when one thinks about the consequences of the war for the world — and for Ukraine most of all — the United States’ failure to do everything within reason to head it off deserves more critical scrutiny than it has received to date.”

“It’s Morally Repugnant, but Isolationism on Ukraine Makes Some Sense,” columnist Simon Kuper, FT, 03.30.23.

• “Isolationists can argue, with some reason, that Putin isn’t America’s problem, or even western Europe’s: Russia hasn’t ventured west of the Elbe river in two centuries. Putin might try swallowing eastern Europe – but the US and western Europe learnt during the cold war that they can still prosper while eastern Europe is in Russian chains. They can even prosper while most of the world is in chains.”
• “Interventionists support their case with an updated version of the “domino theory”: Ukraine is a war for the west, they say, or for democracy, and if Kyiv falls, so will other dominoes. They may be right that Moldova and Georgia would fall to Russia and Taiwan to China. Beyond that, I’m doubtful. The previous American domino theory didn’t pan out: Vietnam went communist but most of south-east Asia didn’t. Another domino theory, 20 years ago, held that if Iraq went democratic, the Middle East would too. It turns out that predicting geopolitics is tricky.”
• “The beauty of isolationism is that it doesn’t even try. A Republican-led US could save 0.3 percent of GDP and ‘own the libs’ by abandoning Ukraine at almost no risk to itself. The American economy would probably sail through any faraway upheavals. The US is the most closed of the world’s 10 biggest economies, with international trade accounting for only a quarter of GDP.”
• “Underlying these arguments is a bigger question: how big is the west? From 1945 through to 1989, the western alliance stretched from Los Angeles to West Berlin. From the 1990s until February 2022, it stretched from LA to Latvia. Now it’s at its biggest ever: from LA to Kyiv. If the Republicans win next year, it could shrink again: from Lisbon to Kyiv? To Latvia? Or only from Lisbon to Berlin? These are existential questions for Poles and Latvians. But they aren’t for Kansans. Isolationists understand that.”

"American Consensus on Ukraine Has Fractured," Bruce W. Jentleson of Duke University, FP, 03.28.23.

• “Whoever emerges as the Republican candidate, they are more likely to be in the Ukraine critic lane than the supporter one. And that may have some advantages for the party in the general election. In the past year, survey questions about Ukraine that explicitly identified policies as Biden’s got much lower approval than those about just the policies themselves.”
• “How Ukraine affects the 2024 presidential general election is contingent on three potential scenarios—one of which could help Biden, but only a bit, while the other two could hurt him quite substantially.”
  • “Ukraine wins… foreign-policy victories often do little to help presidential re-election bids.”
  • “Ukraine loses. The Biden administration’s policies would be criticized as both too little and too much, with the Republican candidate likely making both arguments. Had the United States and NATO done more and done it sooner, Russia would not have prevailed. By doing only what it did, Washington ended up wasting U.S. taxpayers’ money.”
  • “War persists. Biden could credibly claim that Ukraine continuing to hold its own validates his policy. The little guy against the big guy. Wars do go on for years. The course needs to be stayed. U.S. interests, values and reputation all are at stake, both directly in Ukraine and indirectly by the lessons China would draw.”
• “Ukraine will not be the most important issue in 2024; that spot will likely be taken by domestic problems, culture wars, and personas. There’ll be some competitive China-hawking as well. But given margins such as 2020’s 0.23 percent in Georgia, 0.63 percent in Wisconsin, and 1.16 percent in Pennsylvania, if even a few percent of the electorate vote based on Ukraine, the marginal difference could be decisive.”

"The Only Realistic Answer to Putin," By David J. Kramer of the George W. Bush Institute, John Herbst of the Atlantic Council, and former US Ambassador William Taylor, The Atlantic, 03.29.23.

• “The costs of letting Putin have his way in Ukraine, including the damage it would cause to the decades-old international order, are too grave to bear. If not stopped and defeated in Ukraine, Putin will try his luck in other countries in the region, including Moldova and possibly even the Baltic states.”
• “In Ukraine, the Ukrainians are the ones doing the fighting, and tragically the dying; the United States has no soldiers on the ground. But we have every interest in providing the military support Ukraine needs to win this war and drive every Russian occupying and invading force off Ukrainian territory. No one wants the war to end sooner than the Ukrainians, but they also believe, and with good reason, that they can win, if they get the assistance they need soon. Now is not the time to snatch Russian defeat from Ukraine’s jaws of victory.”

"Put America First by Aiding Ukraine," columnist Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, WSJ, 03.29.23.

• “Neo-isolationists on the right and left dismiss Russia's invasion of Ukraine as of little consequence to the U.S. To them, it's a territorial dispute between faraway countries. Some even allege that America is largely responsible for the war: By encouraging democracy's spread in Eastern Europe, the U.S. unnerved Vladimir Putin. It's understandable, they say, that the dictator then unleashed his military to subjugate Ukraine. That's claptrap.”
• “Ukraine's heroic resistance to Russia, a power hostile to the U.S., has dramatically improved America's strategic position world-wide. The Kremlin has become far weaker, while NATO, which includes many of our most trusted allies, has become far stronger and more united than it has been since the Cold War. But if Russia prevails in the war, that progress would be reversed.”
• “Mr. Putin has made clear he'd prefer his bloody adventurism in Europe not to end in Ukraine. In addition to asserting in his July 2021 essay, 'On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,' that the 'true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia,' Mr. Putin suggested Lithuania, Moldova, Belarus and parts of Poland and Slovakia were once integral parts of Russia. The strongman told us he wants to grab more territory, and several of his targets are NATO allies, which the U.S. has pledged by treaty to aid with our armed forces if they're attacked. Neo-isolationists worry about what weapons and aid to Ukraine are costing America, but pulling our support risks American lives down the road.”
• “There's more than our strategic interests at stake. A Europe threatened by an aggressive, resurgent and hostile Russia isn't in our economic interests, either. … A Putin victory in Ukraine would also raise questions in Asia about America's resolve. Our allies there would likely strengthen trade and investment ties with China at America's expense.”
• “And sending military assistance to Ukraine is good for our economy to begin with. Washington is largely paying for American workers to make the weapons, bullets, missiles and equipment we send. … If the U.S. abandons Ukraine after all its courage and sacrifice, it would be a strategic, economic and moral catastrophe that would reduce our influence around the world and damage our economy. Aiding Ukraine is putting America's interests first.”

“Putin's Shakespearean Demons,” Robert D. Kaplan of FPRI, WSJ, 04.03.23.

• “The geopolitical argument that Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was expanding completely disregards the Russian leader's Shakespearean demons. Mr. Putin's decision to invade represented not the collective thinking of the Russian elite but his own thoughts.”
• “Given Mr. Putin's paranoia, isolation and delusions of grandeur, the question arises: Would Europe today be at peace with Mr. Putin's Russia had NATO not expanded east after the Cold War and had there been a Western guarantee of recognizing Russian interests in Ukraine? Certainly not.”
• “The explanation for this lies in what would have been the internal situations of the states of Central and Eastern Europe -- from Estonia south to Bulgaria and including Poland and Romania -- had none of them joined NATO or the European Union. Having suffered nearly a half-century of communism, and in many cases having lacked a robust middle class before Nazi and Soviet occupation, those former Soviet bloc countries might have remained basket cases, with poverty-stricken rural areas and nasty, unstable politics in the capital cities. That would have left all or most of them vulnerable to Mr. Putin's mischief.”

“Russia Won’t Sit Idly by after Finland and Sweden Join NATO,” Nicholas Lokker and Heli Hautala of CNAS, War on the Rocks, 03.30.23.

• “As we argue in a recent Center for a New American Security report, NATO’s forthcoming enlargement will permanently alter the European security architecture and erode Russia’s geopolitical position. Moscow will see these changes as a threat to its security and is likely to respond in ways that will pose challenges to NATO in both the short and long term.”
  • “In the short term, the allies will need to counter Moscow’s attempts to undermine NATO’s position in the Nordic-Baltic-Arctic region, including through various gray zone tactics and more aggressive nuclear posturing aimed at compensating for losses in its conventional military capacity. ...In the short term, NATO — along with the European Union, national governments, private sector companies, and individual citizens — should:”
    • “Plan to increase defenses and resilience against hybrid threats.”
    • “Demonstrate its willingness to respond proportionally to hybrid attacks attributable to Russia.”
    • “In response to the heightened Russian nuclear challenge, NATO should review its nuclear posture, including the role of nuclear weapons in extended deterrence and escalation management along with preparations for fighting in environments affected by nuclear fallout.”
    • “Plan for the conventional threat posed by a resurgent Russia in the Nordic-Baltic theater without taking steps that would be unduly provocative.”
    • “Work towards a comprehensive strategy for Northern European security that conceives of the region as a single theater encompassing not only the High North but also the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic.”
    • “Foster a sense of broader allied solidarity in Finland and Sweden to facilitate their transition away from an ingrained mindset of neutrality.”
  • “In the long term, NATO must plan for a resurgent Russia, as the country will eventually reconstitute its conventional forces in the North and adapt its force posture in response to NATO’s presence in Finland and Sweden.”

"Biden’s Awkward Democracy Summit: America Still Lacks an Effective Approach to the Global South," columnist Edward Luce, FT, 03.29.23.

• “Although accurate estimates of the death toll from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are hard to come by, it is roughly a quarter of Ethiopia’s figure. The Ukraine war is daily front-page news; Ethiopia’s troubles might get mentioned on page 14 every couple of months. As India’s foreign minister, S Jaishankar, put it last year: ‘Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.’ What Jaishankar really meant, of course, was the west as a whole.”
• “When the west can be bothered to listen, the global south’s consistent refrain is for more dollars to help their shift to clean energy, better infrastructure and modern healthcare. Which of the two great powers, China or the US, helps the most is likeliest to shape their political future and foreign policy alignment. One of the by-products of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that it has brought this pressing question to the fore.”
• “Biden’s White House is trying to come up with a coherent US approach to the global south, but officials admit it is a work in progress. China has pumped more money into the developing world than all the west combined — with both good and bad effects. Whether the Malis, Cambodias and Bolivias of this world become democracies lies in their hands. The best way of nudging them down that path is to lecture less and listen more.”

“Why Force Fails. The Dismal Track Record of U.S. Military Interventions,” Jennifer Kavanagh of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Bryan Frederick of the RAND, FA, 03.30.23.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“For Russians and Chinese, Progress Means Increasing Quantity of Justice,” Russian Academy of Sciences’ Vyacheslav Rybakov’s interview with chief editor Fyodor Lukyanov, Russian in Global Affairs, 04.03.23. Clues from Russian Views.

• “The Chinese language has words such as ‘ally’ and even ‘union state.’ But the concept of a political union with other countries is frowned upon. For many centuries, there were no states equal to China in that corner of Eurasia. China had allies when it was fragmented two and a half thousand years ago… In that era, called the Age of Warring States… fragments of China made alliances with other fragments of China against other fragments of China. These were alliances of equals.”
• “As for those who live outside the Middle Kingdom, it is absurd to enter into alliances with them [from a Chinese perspective]. … Therefore, the conclusion of alliances as such is a rather pointless exercise from the Chinese vantage point. … Most likely, we [Russians and Chinese] will not conclude an alliance, and this is even good, because there remains some freedom.”
• “We have the same internal political tasks as the Chinese. It became clear to both them and us that… it is possible to build an independent, efficient, modern capitalist economy only on the basis of pre-capitalist values, the so-called eternal values… only if we bet on those people for whom not everything can be sold and bought, for whom there is something more important than personal earthly success. … And this makes it possible to pursue a coordination of efforts — not by force or even by agreement, but one that would occur automatically, due to objective necessity [with] no need for an alliance.”

“Eye on Taiwan, Beijing Dissects War in Ukraine,” correspondent Chris Buckley, NYT, 04.01.23.

• “In an indirect struggle between two superpowers on the other side of the world, Beijing sees [the Russian-Ukranian war as] a source of invaluable lessons on weapons, troop power, intelligence and deterrence that can help it prepare for potential wars of its own.”
• “In particular, Chinese military analysts have scrutinized the fighting for innovations and tactics that could help in a possible clash over Taiwan.”
• “The New York Times examined nearly 100 Chinese research papers and media articles that deliver assessments of the war by Chinese military and weapons-sector analysts. Here is some of what they have covered:”
  • “With an eye on China's development of hypersonic missiles, which can be highly maneuverable in flight, they have analyzed how Russia used these weapons to destroy an ammunition bunker, a fuel depot and other targets.
  • “They have studied how Ukrainian troops used Starlink satellite links to coordinate attacks and circumvent Russian efforts to shut their communications, and warned that China must swiftly develop a similar low-orbit satellite system and devise ways to knock out rival ones.”
  • “They have argued that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia deterred Western powers from directly intervening in Ukraine by brandishing nuclear weapons, a view that could encourage expansion of China's own nuclear weapons program.”
    •  
      • “Ukraine has offered ''a new understanding of a future possible world war,'' Maj. Gen. Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the National Defense University in Beijing, wrote in the Guangming Daily newspaper, in January. He also wrote: ‘Russia's strategy of nuclear deterrence certainly played a role in ensuring that NATO under the United States' leadership did not dare to directly enter the war.'”
  • “In a potential invasion of Taiwan, Beijing would consider how it might deter Washington, which has pledged to help the island defend itself, and could directly intervene in a military conflict.”
  • “‘The shortcomings that have been exposed in the Russian military's logistics and supplies should be a focus for us,’ said an article in a magazine published by China's agency for developing major military technology.”
• “Studying Russia's mistakes may bolster China's conviction that it could prevail in a possible conflict, said foreign experts who study the People's Liberation Army. … Some Chinese experts have said that Russia's difficulties marshaling enough infantry troops suggest that China needs to keep its ground forces strong and large, even while it expands those of sea and air.”
• “Russia's troubles in Ukraine appear to have hardened official Chinese views that Beijing, like Moscow, is the focus of a United States-led campaign of ‘hybrid warfare’ that includes economic sanctions, technological bans, information campaigns and cyberattacks.”

“‘Dare To Fight’: Xi Jinping Unveils China’s New World Order, journalists Joe Leahy in Beijing, Kathrin Hille in Taipei, Andy Lin in Hong Kong and Michael Pooler in São Paulo, FT, 03.31.23.

• “With China’s political class arrayed before him this month, Xi Jinping summed up his robust foreign policy to delegates with one vivid refrain: ‘dare to fight.’  The declaration at the National People’s Congress captured a new ethos for Beijing, spurred by the Chinese leader’s conclusion that the US-led world order is now in decline and ready to be replaced with a system that better suits China’s interests.”
• “’China is now ready to gradually erode American leadership and promote Chinese governance,’ said Zhao Tong, a senior fellow at the Carnegie think-tank and a visiting scholar at Princeton University.”
• “In October 2017, he [Xi] told the party’s 19th congress: ‘It is time for us to take centre stage in the world.’ Now, Xi wants to consolidate that position. This month, he codified the new foreign policy doctrine with a 24-character formula that included the ‘dare to fight’ phrase.”
• “Chinese diplomats and academics have debated for years how to square the country’s growing global interests with its traditional doctrine of non-interference in other countries’ affairs. To provide a diplomatic framework for incidents such as China’s evacuation of its citizens from Libya in 2011 and its anti-piracy missions around the Horn of Africa, they coined the term ‘constructive interference’. Chinese experts see this concept at work in Beijing’s approach to the Ukraine war, which for western observers is undermined by contradictions.” 

“Xi Jinping Says He Is Preparing China for War. The World Should Take Him Seriously,” former Washington Post Bureau Chief in Beijing John Pomfret and Matt Pottinger of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, FA, 03.29.23.

"Prepare for a Multipolar Currency World," editor Gillian Tett, FT, 04.01.23.

• “This month, Russia and China are sparking new jitters in Washington. That is primarily because of their stage-managed displays of diplomatic unity, around Ukraine and much else.  But it is also down to money: during a visit by Xi Jinping to Moscow last week, Vladimir Putin pledged to adopt the renminbi for ‘payments between Russia and countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America’, in a bid to displace the dollar. And this comes as Moscow is already increasingly using the renminbi for its swelling trade with China and embracing it in its central bank reserves, to reduce its exposure to ‘toxic’ — American — assets.”
• “Before anyone concludes that this means they can completely ignore Putin’s threat, they should look at some thought-provoking research on trade invoicing published last year by the Centre for Economic Policy Research… A $200bn offshore RMB market has already emerged — and the currency is being ‘use[d] in invoicing and settling China’s foreign trade and payments” and “a global network of clearing and payments.’ The net result, the CEPR predicts, is that a “multipolar” currency world could emerge in the coming years.”
• “That would not be as dramatic a switch as Putin or Xi might like to see, or that Washington alarmists fear. But, to my mind, it seems a sensible medium-term bet. And even ‘just’ a multipolar pattern could come as a shock to American policymakers, given how much external financing the US needs. So investors and policymakers alike need to watch the geeky details of trade invoicing in the coming months. Putin’s bluster may turn out to be toothless; but it could also be a straw in the wind.”

“Ask the Experts: How to Stabilize U.S.-China Relations,” senior program director Stephen J. Del Rosso, Carnegie Corporation of New York, March 2023.

• Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken should give a major speech clearly and convincingly upholding the United States’ long-standing One China Policy. Chinese leader Xi Jinping should reciprocate with a speech or major article that clearly articulates that Beijing sees the path to ‘reunification’ as a long-term one, and one that will only travel the road of peace and persuasion.”
• Keisha Brown, Associate Professor; Cofounder and Co-CEO, Black China: “Reinvigorate people-to-people relations.”
• M. Taylor Fravel Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director, Security Studies Program, MIT: “One approach would be for each country to identify what they view as the other’s legitimate interests and thus set the terms of coexistence.”
• Bonny Lin. Director of the China Power Project and Senior Fellow for Asian Security, Center for Strategic International Studies: “Both countries should maintain as much connectivity as possible, including diplomatic and military engagements and trade, and increase people-to-people exchanges.”
• Susan Shirk Research Professor and Chair, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego: “The exclusionary approaches currently favored in the U.S. will do lasting damage to American society, higher education, and the economy. The U.S. is competing with China by becoming more like China — nationalist, fixated on security, and politicizing the market economy — instead of becoming a better version of itself.”
• Jessica Chen Weiss Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies, Cornell University: “Given the interest of both governments in putting a floor under the relationship, the most important step would be a tacit agreement to limit actions that could trigger a crisis or sharp escalation, particularly around Taiwan but also in the South China Sea.”

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“Nuclear Weapons in Belarus: History Repeats Itself,” William Alberque of IISS, RM, 03.31.23.

• “Basing nuclear weapons in Belarus opens new avenues of short-range nuclear attack on U.S. allies … This geographic shift also comes in the context of some Russian government officials issuing increasingly strident nuclear threats … Russia’s increasingly violent nuclear rhetoric, combined with the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus’ territory are developments to be condemned. However, these developments do not fundamentally alter the balance of power in Europe, nor do they significantly alter the risk of nuclear conflict.”
• “The deployment announcement also reverses years of Russian policy focused on gaining international support for its criticism of similar arrangements within NATO. It also may signal advances in Russia’s efforts to absorb Belarus as a separate entity … and a shift in [Putin’s] nuclear posture in Central Europe. … Putin’s announcement [also] directly contradicts the joint statement Putin made with China’s Xi on March 21.”
• “The U.S. and NATO have been cautious so far in their reactions. … Moving forward, there is no matter of treaty compliance here, unless Russia hands operational control of nuclear weapons in peacetime to Belarusian forces. Rather, the U.S. and NATO should continue to highlight the lack of responsible behavior by Russian authorities, particularly in discussions with China about nuclear rhetoric, and mourn the increasing loss of Belarusian sovereignty. Economic sanctions also are likely to be of limited use.”
• “Taken together, all of these changes will further incentivize the Central European NATO allies to work toward the goal of establishing a more robust architecture of better-integrated air and missile defenses along the NATO-Belarus and NATO-Russian borders. Such a re-orientation poses huge technological, financial and strategic challenges, but these challenges preceded Russia’s changed nuclear posture. Russia’s moves certainly will help overcome the problem of political will.”

“Mr. Putin's reckless Belarus gambit,” Editorial Board, WP, 03.30.23.

• “Putin’s announcement that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus marks yet another worrisome turn. The cataclysmic power of nuclear weapons created a taboo against reckless threats during the Cold War. Mr. Putin's rhetoric is shredding that restraint once again.”
• “How serious he is remains unclear. Mr. Putin told Rossiya 24 television on March 25 that Russia had already given Belarus 10 nuclear-capable planes, delivered a nuclear-capable Iskander missile complex, would begin training crews on April 3 and would complete construction of a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July 1. However, there is no known construction site for such a complex warehouse in Belarus, and it seems unlikely one could be finished in so short a time.”
• “Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus autocrat, has become Mr. Putin's satrap, and the arrival of nuclear warheads would only subordinate Belarus further to Russia.”
• “Belarus needs all the help it can get in the struggle to be free of a Kremlin-owned dictatorship that is putting it at the front lines of the war in Ukraine.”

Remarks by Ambassador Geng Shuang at the U.N. Security Council Briefing on Threats to International Peace and Security, UN.China-mission.gov.cn, 03.31.23. Clues from Chinese Views.

• “China’s position on the issue of nuclear weapons has been clear and consistent. Since its first day in possession of nuclear weapons, China has firmly committed to a defensive nuclear strategy, and honored the pledge [of] no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances. China has also clearly committed unconditionally not to use or threat[en] to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states or nuclear weapon free zones. China is the only nuclear weapon state to have made these pledges.”
• “China attaches great importance to the status of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as the cornerstone of international nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, firmly upholds the authority, effectiveness and the universal nature of the Treaty, and advocates a step-by-step approach to advance nuclear disarmament process for the eventual complete ban and total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
• “We call for the abolition of the nuclear sharing arrangements and advocate no deployment of nuclear weapons abroad by all nuclear weapons states and the withdrawal of nuclear weapons deployed aboard.”
• “In January last year, the leaders of the five nuclear weapon states issued a joint statement emphasizing that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and reaffirming that none of the nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other state. … China calls on all nuclear weapon states to abide by the vision of the statement, effectively reduce the risk of a nuclear war, and avoid any armed conflict between nuclear weapons states.”
• “Not long ago, China issued a position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, which comprehensively laid out China’s propositions. It includes aspects regarding opposing armed attacks against nuclear power plants or other peaceful nuclear facilities, emphasizing … that the threat or use of nuclear weapons should be opposed, and that nuclear proliferation must be prevented and nuclear crisis avoided.”

“Blundering on the Brink. The Secret History and Unlearned Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Sergey Radchenko of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Vladislav Zubok of the London School of Economics, FA, 04.03.23.

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

“Wheat and war: How sanctions are driving Russia-Syria cooperation,” consulting fellow Haid Haid, Chatham House, 03.29.23.

• “Prior to the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Syria produced around 3.5 million tons of wheat per year, enough to meet domestic demand. However, the large-scale damage to agricultural infrastructure, deepening economic crisis, territorial divisions, corruption, displacement, low profitability of agricultural activities and bad weather conditions have nearly halved Syria’s wheat production.”
• “As a result, the Syrian government has become heavily reliant on wheat imports from Russia, which currently range between 1.2 and 1.5 million tons a year. Research by the XCEPT project shows that not all the wheat going from, or through, Russia into Syria was legally obtained; occupied Crimea alone exported over 1 million tons of wheat to Syria between 2019 and 2022. Sources also highlighted that Moscow’s occupation of parts of Ukraine has significantly increased the overall volume of grains being shipped.”
• “This reality is unlikely to change. Syria’s wheat production in 2023 is expected to remain around 75% lower than pre-2011 levels due to insufficient rainfall and the high cost of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers, seeds and fuel. This means its cereal import needs for this year is forecast at 2.7 million tons. This reliance on imports—in addition to the funds diverted to fuel conflict in Syria—almost guarantees Syria will remain a potential market for the stolen grains.”

Cyber security/AI:

“Russia's War in Ukraine: Examining the Success of Ukrainian Cyber Defenses,” Dan Black of Google’s Mandiant, IISS, 03.28.23.

• “Modifications ranging from national legislative changes to strict operational security protocols have combined to negate Russia’s advantages and seize the initiative. And throughout the different phases of the war, Ukraine has skillfully adjusted to the nature of Russia’s cyber operations and the related political, military and technical challenges. At this juncture, it is uncontroversial to argue that Ukraine has decisively won the adaptation battle in cyberspace.”
• “More importantly, through its defensive actions, Ukraine has shattered the long-held perception of offence dominance in the cyber domain. Kyiv has shown that through preparation, agility and proactive defensive maneuvers, it is possible to mount a robust cyber defense. Indeed, in a domain as fluid and complex as cyberspace, neither offence or defense is likely to have an inherent advantage. Rather, those who can position themselves to best sense and adjust to a rapidly changing operational environment are most likely to prevail. Key com-ponents of Ukraine’s defensive model, such as its decentralized response capacity, a well-prepared national cyber defense ecosystem and strong inter-national partnerships, have provided Kyiv this crucial positional advantage relative to Moscow. Reversing the common adage that the enemy gets a vote—equally so does the defender.”
• “But we must also be careful not to read too much into what the Ukraine war means for the general character of cyber warfare. Cyberspace is still a nascent war-fighting domain and Russia’s ill-conceived invasion of Ukraine has done little to demonstrate what a well-planned and integrated use of cyber operations could achieve in practice. Moreover, as this paper has established, little remains known about the counterforce applications of cyber operations in Ukraine that are likely to be most consequential to any transferrable military lessons. It is crucial that policymakers acknowledge that the cyber dimensions of any future conflicts, such as a Taiwan contingency, are likely to look fundamentally different than what we have seen in Ukraine.”

Energy exports from CIS:

• No significant developments.

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Espionage Charge Adds Hurdle to Freeing a Reporter Detained in Russia,” journalists Anton Troianovski, Ivan Nechepurenko and Mike Crowley, NYT, 03.31.23.

• “Freeing any American who has been imprisoned in Russia is a daunting challenge, but the espionage charge leveled against a Wall Street Journal reporter detained there this week will make efforts to secure his release particularly difficult. … The Russian authorities have accused the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, of trying to gain illicit information about the country’s ‘military-industrial complex.’ In the Kremlin’s eyes, experts say, that puts him in a special category of prisoners.”
• “[T]he allegations against Mr. Gershkovich, which he denied in a court appearance on Thursday and which his employer adamantly rejects, could signal a higher Kremlin asking price than in those earlier cases. That is the lesson to date in the case of yet another American accused of spying and imprisoned by Russia, Paul Whelan … Russia officials ‘continue to insist on sham charges of espionage,’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in December, ‘and are treating Paul’s case differently.’ That helps explain why Mr. Whelan has remained in a bleak Russian prison months after Mr. Reed and Ms. Griner returned home.”
• “Clear signs have already emerged that the Kremlin was motivated by a potential spy swap. Pro-Russia commentators started speculating about the possibility almost immediately, even as they posited that Mr. Gershkovich would first need to be tried and sentenced.”
• “For the Kremlin, the arrest of Mr. Gershkovich serves other purposes. It is also a chance to show that Russia is prepared to take ever more drastic steps in confronting what Mr. Putin frequently refers to as ‘Western hegemony.’”
• “If recent precedent is a guide, Mr. Gershkovich is likely to spend more than a year in a high-security prison in almost complete isolation awaiting the end of a lengthy investigation and trial, according to two Russian lawyers who have worked on similar cases.”

“Evan Gershkovich's Arrest Means No Journalist Can Feel Safe in Russia Today,” Andrei Soldatov of CEPA, MT, 03.30.23.

• “Foreign correspondents in Russia have been forced to develop a very sophisticated early warning system for danger in the two decades since Vladimir Putin came to power. ... The early warning system … involved two key institutions: the Foreign Ministry and Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson. ... [I]f a journalist wanted to get a sense of where they were with the Kremlin, it made far more sense to speak to the Foreign Ministry or with Peskov.”
• “When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the rules for journalists were significantly tightened. ... Still, even if the rules tightened, the early warning system still appeared to be in place and foreign correspondents continued to count on the fact that the Foreign Ministry and Peskov would still have a say in their treatment should they ever fall foul of the law.”
• “The Wednesday arrest of the Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, someone I have had the honor of knowing for many years, has shown that this is no longer the case and that the early warning system has been destroyed once and for all. It no longer makes sense to see what the current feeling at the Foreign Ministry is, what kind of mood Zakharova was in yesterday or what Peskov thought of your most recent story. There are now only two institutions that matter: Vladimir Putin and the FSB.”
• “From now on, all foreign journalists, and by default all foreign nationals, are potential fair game for Putin and the Russian security services, and it would appear that this rule applies not just to journalism but to everything happening in Russia.”

“How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie,” Editorial Board, WP, 03.29.23.

• “As the historian Thomas Rid wrote in ‘Active Measures,’ … disinformation can weaken a political system that places its trust in truth. ‘Disinformation operations, in essence, erode the very foundations of open societies,’ he wrote.”
• “A disinformation operation now being waged by Russia shows in stark detail how this malevolence works. Taking a program by the United States that was intended to make people healthier and safer in the former Soviet Union, a program it had welcomed and participated in for 22 years, Russia twisted facts into a cloud of falsehoods. … At Mr. Putin's Moscow summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on March 21, the two leaders did it again, expressing ‘serious concern’ about the biological military activities of the United States, both inside and outside the country.’ In April, the Russian parliament commission is expected to deliver its report, another chance to spread the contamination.”
• “The best way to strike back is with the facts, and fast. Thomas Kent, the former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has pointed out that the first hours are critical in such an asymmetrical conflict: Spreaders of disinformation push out lies without worrying about their integrity, while governments and the news media try to verify everything, and take more time to do so.”
• “In a world that connects billions of people at a flash, the truth may have only a fighting chance against organized lying. As an old saying has it: ‘A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.’”

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Why Do Russians Still Want to Fight?” Marlene Laruelle and Ivan Grek of George Washington University, NYT, 03.31.23.

• “For many Russian men and their families, the war may be a horror. But it's also the last opportunity to fix their lives.”
  • “First, there's the money. The federal base salary for a soldier is about $2,500 a month, with payment of $39,000 for wounding and up to $65,000 in the case of death. ... For those coming back from the front, the state promises fast-tracked entry into civil service jobs, health insurance, free public transportation, as well as free university education and free food at school for their children. And for those who were imprisoned and joined the Wagner private military company, the state grants freedom.”
  • “Interviews with three wounded soldiers and their families on the anti-Kremlin network TV Rain [revealed that] ... the interviewees still considered the war just and wanted to return to the front or support the war efforts as volunteers.”
  • “By allowing men to escape the difficulties of everyday life—with its low pay and routine frustrations—the war offers a restoration of male self-worth.”
  • “In the communal life of conflict, many of the distinctions of civilian life dissolve. War is an equalizer. That surely explains its appeal to those from lower social classes. By participating in the war, millions of Russians at the bottom of the social ladder can emerge as the country's true heroes.”
• “In the absence of an alternative vision of the future, Vladimir Putin and his war will continue to hold sway.”

“Ukraine and Siberia,” Sergei Karaganov of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 03.01.23. Clues from Russian Views.

• “The Russia-West confrontation in Ukraine should finally force us to focus on a Siberia strategy―turning the whole country toward new Eastern horizons, and that means bringing it back home.”
• “The current geostrategic and geoeconomic situation leaves no alternative but to propose and vigorously advance a new Siberian turn for the whole of Russia, shifting the vector of its spiritual and economic development to the East. Administrative centers should also move eastward, followed by ambitious and patriotic young people.”
• “Siberia has many territories which lack labor, but are more than habitable and even comfortable, especially in the context of climate change. The Minusinsk Hollow area ... is quite suitable for growing apricots, can accommodate not just several tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people.”
• “For Siberian and other big projects to materialize, the country must ensure at least minimal peace, and avoid sliding into the third and last, since it will be global thermonuclear, war incited by the desperate attack of the West.”
  • “The special military operation will have to be supplemented with active steps up the ‘nuclear deterrence ladder,’ which makes it more convincing for Western elites that have lost all fear of war and are now losing the remains of their minds and self-preservation instincts. Without climbing this ladder, the Russia-West confrontation in Ukraine will go on for a long time, distracting the country from moving toward new horizons. This distraction is one of the goals of Western politics. I will speak about how to climb this in one of my future articles.”

Defense and aerospace:

•  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:

Excerpts from “The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation,” Russian Foreign Ministry, 03.31.23.

• “Humanity is currently going through revolutionary changes. The formation of a more equitable multipolar world order is underway. ... The international legal system is put to the test: a small group of states is trying to replace it with the concept of a rules-based world order.”
• “In order to help adapt the world order to the realities of a multipolar world, the Russian Federation intends to make it a priority to ... eliminate the vestiges of domination by the U.S. and other unfriendly states in global affairs, create conditions to enable any state to renounce neo-colonial or hegemonic ambitions.”
• “Considering the strengthening of Russia as one of the leading centers of development in the modern world and its independent foreign policy as a threat to Western hegemony, the United States of America … and their satellites used the measures taken by the Russian Federation as regards Ukraine to protect its vital interests as a pretext to aggravate the longstanding anti-Russian policy and unleashed a new type of hybrid war [against Russia].”
• “Russia's course toward the U.S. has a combined character, taking into account the role of this state as one of the influential sovereign centers of world development and at the same time the main inspirer, organizer and executor of the aggressive anti-Russian policy of the collective West, the source of major risks to the security of the Russian Federation, international peace, a balanced, equitable and progressive development of humanity.”
• “The Russian Federation is interested in maintaining strategic parity, peaceful coexistence with the United States, and the establishment of a balance of interests between Russia and the United States, taking into account their status as major nuclear powers and special responsibility for strategic stability and international security in general. The prospects of forming such a model of U.S.-Russian relations depend on the extent to which the United States is ready to abandon its policy of power-domination and revise its anti-Russian course in favor of interaction with Russia on the basis of the principles of sovereign equality, mutual benefit, and respect for each other's interests.”
• “Russia does not consider itself to be an enemy of the West, is not isolating itself from the West and has no hostile intentions with regard to it; Russia hopes that in future the states belonging to the Western community will realize that their policy of confrontation and hegemonic ambitions lack prospects, will take into account the complex realities of a multipolar world and will resume pragmatic cooperation with Russia being guided by the principles of sovereign equality and respect for each other's interests. The Russian Federation is ready for dialogue and cooperation on such a basis.”
• “Russia aims at further strengthening the comprehensive partnership and the strategic cooperation with the People's Republic of China ... and will continue to build up a particularly privileged strategic partnership with the Republic of India.”
• “Russia seeks to transform Eurasia into a continental common space of peace, stability, mutual trust, development and prosperity.”
• “More than a thousand years of independent statehood … determine Russia's special position as a unique country-civilization.”
• “The use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation can address, in particular, the tasks of repelling and preventing an armed attack on Russia and (or) its allies, resolving crises, maintaining (restoring) peace as commissioned by the U.N. Security Council or other collective security structures with the participation of Russia in their area of responsibility, protecting their citizens abroad, combating international terrorism and piracy.”
• “In the event of unfriendly acts by foreign states or their associations threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, including those involving restrictive measures (sanctions) of a political or economic nature or the use of modern information and communication technologies, the Russian Federation considers it lawful to take the symmetrical and asymmetrical measures necessary to suppress such unfriendly acts and also to prevent them from recurring in future.”
• “[The Russian Federation intends] to ensure strategic stability, eliminate the prerequisites for unleashing a global war and risks of using nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction, and shaping a renewed international security architecture.”

“How the Ukraine Grain Deal Went From Boon to Burden for the Kremlin,” visiting fellow Alexandra Prokopenko, DGAP, 03.29.23. Clues from Russian Views.

• “After several weeks of complaining and wavering, Russia has agreed once again to extend the grain deal with Ukraine—though only for sixty days, instead of another 120-day extension due to come into force automatically when the current term ends on March 18. As talks continue on allowing another 120-day extension, Moscow says that the West is not meeting its obligations under the deal, though it is making the claim less loudly and insistently than ahead of the previous extension last October.”
• “Russia already threatened to tear up the grain deal on the eve of the previous extension last fall, citing a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian naval base in Sevastopol, which it claimed targeted ships involved in the deal. Putin demanded written security guarantees for naval and civilian vessels operating in the vicinity of the green corridor, but in the end had to settle for verbal assurances from Turkey. At the same time, less public economic demands were made: to release Russian fertilizer blocked in European ports, restart the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline (a vital export route for Russian ammonia), and lift sanctions against Russia’s state agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank, previously headed by Dmitry Patrushev, the current agriculture minister and son of Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.”
• “None of those demands have been met. ... Despite its demands not having been met, Russia did agree to the previous extension of the grain deal last fall.”
• “Russia proved unable to make use of its position, having underestimated the altered balance of power. Now Moscow needs its grain deal partners far more than they need it, which makes it hard for the Kremlin to put pressure on anyone. Consequently, Russia has become a purely technical party to the agreement. Its partners could extend the deal even without Russia’s consent, making Moscow look even more feeble on the international stage.”

Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Hosting Russian Nuclear Weapons Will Have Far-Reaching Consequences for Belarus,” nonresident scholar Artyom Shraibman, Carnegie Endowment, 03.28.23.

• “The fate of Belarus as a state is becoming increasingly tied to the outcome of a future peace settlement. It will be hard for any subsequent government in Minsk to distance itself from Russia economically and politically of its own accord. But once Belarus starts hosting Russian nuclear weapons, it will be downright impossible.”

“Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Belarusian Freedom and the War in Ukraine,” fellow Svenja Kirsch, Belfer Center, 03.28.23.

• “Most Belarusians don’t want to be connected with Russia. We regard our nation as being fundamentally different from the Russian nation. And Belarusians don’t support Russia’s war in Ukraine. We don’t support Lukashenka’s support of Putin’s invasion, and despite the intense repression … people continue to resist the regime.”
• “We want to bring down the Belarusian regime. We want to democratize the country. I recognize that overthrowing the regime is only part of the job. We also need to democratize society as a whole and build democratic institutions. It’s a long road to democracy in Belarus, but the movement that I am leading is already starting to communicate democratically and thinking about how to build democratic institutions.”
• “A new protest wave against the Belarusian government will also depend on the outcome of the war in Ukraine. We understand that the fate of Belarus and Ukraine is intertwined. We face the same enemy. Some officials in the government agree with this perception. It might be that some of these people speak up and start fighting the regime from the inside. These people should also fight the imperialistic ambitions of Russia and the Kremlin’s political influence on Belarus. With the Russian influence on the Belarusian government and Russian troop presence on Belarusian territory, there is little to no possibility to organize an effective mass uprising. We want peaceful change in our country.”