Russia Analytical Report, April 13–20, 2026

2 Ideas to Explore

  1. David Petraeus distills three lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war in his op-ed for WSJ. First, “mass matters,” as “the future lies not in small numbers of exquisite (and increasingly vulnerable) systems, but in massive numbers of affordable unmanned platforms,” the retired general writes. Second, “speed of adaptation matters,” as “the advantage goes to the side that learns and iterates fastest,” according to the former CIA director. Third, “resilience in contested environments is essential,” as “systems must function despite jamming, degraded communications and denied domains,” he writes. Meanwhile, Iran has been studying lessons from the war in Ukraine too, with “one of the most important points in that war [being] the widespread use of small drones and artificial intelligence,” Jacob Judah writes in FT.
  2. “If you’re Putin, feeling so embattled, you might be starting to think about the next war—against Europe—even as you slog ahead in Ukraine,” David Ignatius warns in his April 16 WaPo column. If Putin “struck a European country,” then “the scariest question” in Ignatius’ view would be what Donald Trump would do, given his view of NATO as a “paper tiger.” “Trump is so preoccupied with his list of anti-NATO grievances that he seems deaf to what could be the greatest crisis of his presidency. If one day historians ask, “Who lost Europe?” what will Trump’s supine national security advisers say in response?” Ignatius concludes.

U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

  • No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:1

"How the Iran War Benefits China—and Raises Risks for Europe," Alexander Gabuev in conversation with Vladislav Gorin for Carnegie Politika, 04.15.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  •  Alexander Gabuev argues that the U.S.–Israeli war with Iran has created a window in which “the negotiating process still has a chance,” noting that the cease-fire is holding and “both sides clearly think a deal is still possible” or they would already have resumed strikes. He points out that the reported U.S. offer—“a moratorium on enrichment for 20 years and removal of enriched uranium to a third country”—looks like “a serious step toward a configuration Tehran could accept,” essentially a re‑engineered version of the Obama‑era JCPOA that Trump himself tore up, raising the question of whether the war’s costs were necessary to reach roughly the same place.
  • For Russia, Gabuev stresses that prolonged high oil prices from a Hormuz crisis are a mixed blessing: they ease short‑term budget pressure but are partly offset by “physical sanctions” from Ukrainian drone attacks on export infrastructure such as Ust‑Luga, Primorsk, and Novorossiysk, while the war in Ukraine still “eats the Russian economy from within.” At the same time, he warns that Trump’s open talk of downgrading NATO commitments and using Ukraine aid as a bargaining chip with Putin could “increase the Kremlin’s appetite for risk,” especially if Moscow believes it can move fast in places like the Suwałki corridor and then push Trump into negotiations rather than a full NATO response.
  • On China, Gabuev argues that the Iran war “hits Beijing much less than its industrial competitors in Europe” and in some ways “confirms that China prepared better than others.” Only about a quarter of China’s oil imports come from the Middle East and roughly 12% from Iran, he notes, and Beijing has spent years diversifying to Russian pipelines, Australian and other suppliers, massive coal and nuclear generation, and a world‑leading renewables build‑out, plus huge strategic oil reserves it has not yet tapped. A drawn‑out Gulf crisis thus raises costs but remains manageable for China while squeezing energy‑dependent Europe and deepening Russia’s reliance on Chinese buyers and financing—strengthening Beijing’s hand in talks on projects like Power of Siberia‑2. Gabuev also suggests that limited air‑defense and other transfers to Iran would let China quietly test systems and tactics against U.S. and Israeli forces, turning the conflict into a live laboratory—provided Beijing calibrates support carefully enough not to trigger direct Western retaliation.


"This War Has Not Gone Putin’s Way," Serge Schmemann, New York Times, 04.18.26.

  • Serge Schmemann writes that although the Iran war has brought Russia “an economic windfall… pushing oil prices sky-high and loosening sanctions,” it has also produced “yet another in a series of recent blows to the great-power role President Vladimir Putin so cherishes.” He notes that Iran, “Russia’s closest partner in the Middle East,” has seen its economy and military battered, following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro and the fall of Bashar al-Assad, leaving Moscow’s bases in Syria in question. “Russia, moreover, has been excluded from any say in the future of Iran or its other allies,” Schmemann observes, and even watched U.S. forces seize a Russian tanker off Venezuela.
  • According to Schmemann, Putin is discovering that “those who are involved in the conflict cannot predict anything themselves, but for us it is even more difficult,” as he put it to Russia’s business elite, while Trump’s “mysterious affinity” alternates with pique—“I’m not happy with Putin… because he’s killing a lot of people.” The author highlights reports that Putin has for the first time asked oligarchs for “voluntary contributions” to plug a war-drained budget, even as Ukraine “has been flying drones deep into Russia to strike oil terminals” and Russian public fatigue grows, with 67% in one poll saying Moscow should move toward peace talks. “Each day the war continues, Russia falls farther behind in the great-power competition,” Schmemann quotes Thomas Graham as arguing, adding that Russia “does not need resources to continue the war… it needs incentives to end it.”


"Russia Is Meddling for Meddling’s Sake in the Middle East," Nikita Smagin, Carnegie Politika, 04.15.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Nikita Smagin argues that the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has brought Russia “impressive benefits—above all in the form of additional income from higher oil prices and a possible reduction in military aid to Ukraine,” yet also exposes “the absence of any ability for the Kremlin to influence events.” Moscow’s offers to mediate were ignored, he notes, as talks went instead to Islamabad and possibly Türkiye, even after strikes damaged “the Russian consulate in Isfahan,” hit a Russian Orthodox church in Tehran, destroyed the key trade hub of Bandar Anzali, and repeatedly bombed the Bushehr nuclear plant staffed by Rosatom engineers, forcing “the evacuation of almost all Russian specialists.” This creates, in the Kremlin’s eyes, “a dangerous precedent” in which the United States and Israel “can gradually squeeze Russia out of Iran, ignoring Moscow’s interests, while the Kremlin responds only with press releases.”
  • Smagin writes that Russia is “looking for ways to move from the audience into the ranks of direct participants” by delivering weapons and intelligence. Since March, Moscow has begun supplying Iran with Geran strike drones—“a modernized Russian analogue of the Shahed‑136”—a “qualitatively new stage” that, unlike earlier deals for helicopters or armored vehicles, involves “weapons directly suitable for strikes on Israeli or U.S. forces.” At the same time, “Moscow has started providing Tehran with intelligence to help guide Iranian strikes,” cautiously “probing the limits of what is permissible” without provoking major anger in Israel, the United States, or Gulf monarchies.
  • What Russia gains, Smagin contends, is “its own presence in the unfolding conflict”: Iranian drone attacks force the United States and allies “to use more interceptors that might otherwise have gone to Kyiv,” and “the very fact of support is a lever of pressure” for future bargaining. He cites a reported Russian proposal to Washington that Moscow would stop sharing intel with Iran if the United States stopped doing so with Ukraine. For now, he concludes, Russia’s role in the war is limited and “looks more like an attempt to make a down payment for the future,” creating a foreign‑policy asset “just in case”—much as its Syrian intervention began—so that “time will show how best to use it to Russia’s advantage.”


"President Xi Jinping made four propositions on safeguarding and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East,"statement by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning relaying Xi Jinping’s remarks, X (Twitter), 04.20.26.

  • Mao Ning says President Xi Jinping urged the region to “stay committed to the principle of peaceful co-existence,” stressing that “the Gulf states in the Middle East are close neighbors that cannot move away.” According to the spokesperson, Xi called it “important to support the Gulf states in improving their ties, work to build a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security architecture of the Middle East and the Gulf region, and consolidate the foundation for peaceful co-existence.”
  • Xi’s second and third propositions, Mao notes, are to “stay committed to the principle of national sovereignty” and to “stay committed to the principle of international rule of law.” Sovereignty “must not be violated,” she quotes him as saying, adding that “the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the Gulf states should be earnestly respected, and the safety of their personnel, facilities and institutions vigorously safeguarded,” while it is “important to firmly uphold the international system with the U.N. at its core” and “the international order based on international law.”
  • Finally, Mao reports that Xi urged countries to “stay committed to a balanced approach to development and security,” arguing that “security is a prerequisite for development, and development serves as a safeguard of security.” All sides, he said, should “create a sound environment for and bring positive energy to the development of the Gulf states,” and “China stands ready to share with the Gulf countries the opportunities through Chinese modernization, and work with them to nurture a fertile ground for regional development and security.”


"From good to not good: The impact of the war in Iran on Russia," Jana Kobzova, ECFR, 04.2026.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

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



"Winning in the Donbas: What Russia’s 2014–2015 Campaign Reveals About Modern War", Amos Fox, War on the Rocks, 04.17.26.

  • Amos Fox argues that Russia’s 2014–2015 Donbas campaign—Ilovaisk, Donetsk Airport, Debal’tseve—shows “what an effective and truly decisive military campaign looks like,” stressing that “it takes a land force to defeat a land force” and that Russian commanders “understood their strategic goals, reacted to fluctuations on the battlefield, and modified their plans” to turn tactical gains into “politically decisive battlefield gains.” The Minsk II agreement, he writes, was “the political manifestation of Russia’s gains,” helping Moscow “destabiliz[e] Ukraine, interfer[e] with the Ukraine-NATO partnership” and secure forward basing for the 2022 invasion.
  • Fox contends the campaign proves that “control of the situation in warfare remains paramount,” generated by “overwhelming firepower and manpower” used persistently, and that Russia “supplemented their forces with additional firepower and manpower” whenever control was slipping. He highlights Russia’s willingness to seek “positive aims and negative goals,” destroying Donetsk Airport to render it “worthless” and thus “improved its strategic position,” and concludes that the Donbas campaign deserves study alongside “Napoleon’s Ulm-Austerlitz” as a classic of land warfare whose lessons still shape Russia’s current war.


"America’s Success Against Iran May Prove a Distraction," David H. Petraeus, Wall Street Journal, 04.16.26.

  • David Petraeus writes that while “America’s impressive military performance in the Gulf should be a source of pride,” it “would be a mistake to draw too much comfort from it,” because it “distract[s] from the lessons we could learn about modern warfare from the war in Ukraine.” He argues that the Gulf has showcased “expertise, professionalism and courage” and “advanced technologies at scale,” but insists that “Ukraine is the more demanding laboratory,” where “war is increasingly defined by unmanned systems, artificial intelligence and mass precision.”
  • In Ukraine, he notes, “this is industrial-scale warfare, in which success depends less on exquisite platforms than on mass, resilience and constant innovation,” pointing out that Kyiv has used cheap maritime drones to damage the Black Sea Fleet, proving that “inexpensive unmanned maritime systems can challenge traditional naval power.” By contrast, U.S.-Israeli operations against Iran have occurred under “more permissive conditions,” with adversaries having “limited ability to contest operations across domains at scale.”
  • Petraeus distills three lessons from Ukraine. First, “mass matters,” as “the future lies not in small numbers of exquisite (and increasingly vulnerable) systems, but in massive numbers of affordable unmanned platforms.” Second, “speed of adaptation matters,” as “the advantage goes to the side that learns and iterates fastest.” Third, “resilience in contested environments is essential,” as “systems must function despite jamming, degraded communications and denied domains.” He concludes that “the performance of our forces should inspire confidence. The lessons of Ukraine should instill urgency.”


"How Iran Has Been Studying Lessons From the War in Ukraine," Jacob Judah, Financial Times, 04.18.26.

  • Jacob Judah reports that Iranian commanders and theorists have spent years “assiduously mining the war in Ukraine for strategic lessons,” closely watching “how the Russians are operating” and how Ukraine has adapted “to fighting a much more powerful opponent.” One senior commander, Hossein Dadvand, wrote that the conflict showed “the widespread use of small drones and artificial intelligence,” urging Iran to invest in drones, adopt “nimbler and more mobile combat units,” and modernize training and textbooks to reflect Ukraine’s battlefield experience. To Iranians, “one of the most important points in that war was the widespread use of small drones and artificial intelligence,” Judah writes.
  • The FT’s review of more than 300 articles in Iranian military journals finds repeated references to Russia’s performance in Ukraine: authors cite “new threats” emerging from the conflict, stress the need to plan procurement around “drones, lasers and space-based platforms,” and highlight Ukraine’s “resilience of defense production” and use of 3D‑printed cheap drones to offset Russian advantages. 
  • Judah notes that Russia features both as a combat laboratory and as a supplier: former defense minister Aziz Nasirzadeh co‑authored a piece on the Iran‑Iraq war that ends with an “urgent appeal” to rebuild Iran’s neglected fighter fleet by purchasing Su‑35s from Russia, and Tehran confirmed it would move ahead with acquiring them shortly after his appointment. 


"Ukraine’s Success Still Needs Troops More Than Robots," Luke McGee, Foreign Policy, 04.16.26.

  • Luke McGee writes that while outsiders fixate on drones and robots, “military success is still built on a human foundation” and that recruiting and motivating soldiers is “an increasingly tough task in the fifth year of the war—especially as Ukraine battles demoralizing Russian propaganda.” Olesia Horiainova of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center argues that although unmanned systems impress, “to hold territory and to operate UAVs and UGVs, you need people physically there.” According to the author, Ukraine’s 900,000‑strong force and reserves mask a deeper problem: “skepticism of the conscription process” and war fatigue.
  • McGee reports that Ukrainian research finds Russia running “a deliberate and concerted effort … to demoralize the population, and disrupt mobilization and recruitment processes in order to undermine the state’s defense capabilities,” pushing themes that “Zelenskyy is a traitor,” that “wealthy elites are paying their way to avoid military service,” and that going AWOL is “a legitimate form of protest.” “The best propaganda usually has a grain of truth to it,” he notes, and warns that Moscow’s information war is amplifying real grievances over corruption, treatment of conscripts, and lenient penalties for desertion.


“Frontline stable (UA technological, tactical adaptation + winter slowdown) politics is getting messy, damaged energy system key vulnerability,” Balazs Jarabik’s summary of Essential Ukraine 21 in his X account, 04.17.26.

"Ukraine’s drone pilots hit Russian targets from 500km away," Fabrice Deprez, Financial Times, 04.19.26.

Military aid to Ukraine:

"How Congress Can Help Ukraine," Brendan Simms and Edward Siddle, Foreign Affairs, 04.14.26.

  • Brendan Simms and Edward Siddle argue that since the beginning of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a contradictory approach to the war in Ukraine. He initially said Ukrainians should “get their land back” and called Russia “a paper tiger,” but then pushed a 28‑point peace plan under which Ukraine would “lose in a short period of time” if it refused. Ukraine’s survival, they contend, is not up to Trump alone: Congress “has the tools to shape U.S. policy toward Kyiv regardless of the president’s position.”
  • They urge Congress to pass a bipartisan “Ukraine Relations Act” affirming U.S. support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and providing strong security guarantees against future Russian aggression, modeled on the Taiwan Relations Act and the 1995 Bosnia arms‑embargo fight. The act would spell out deterrence provisions, make further Russian aggression automatically trigger U.S. military assistance, and require Ukraine’s inclusion in any U.S.-backed peace deal. Even a failed bill, they argue, could pressure the Trump administration, much as Bosnia legislation helped push President Bill Clinton toward NATO airstrikes.

 

"In the Gulf, Ukraine flaunts its skill at intercepting drones," The Economist, 04.13.26.

  • The Economist recounts that Donald Trump told Fox News “we don’t need their help in drone defense” and claimed “we have the best drones in the world,” but “the Gulf states, under attack by Iranian missiles and Shahed drones, took a different view.” At their request, “Ukraine rapidly sent them 228 advisers with battle-tested experience in drone defense,” and in late March Volodymyr Zelenskyy “toured the region and signed ten-year security partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,” while also working with Jordan and Kuwait. The deals recognize that after four years of war, “Ukrainian expertise in drone warfare… far exceeds anything that American and European arms suppliers can offer.”
  • Ukraine’s defense firms have “honed the mass production of cheap but effective drone interceptors that cost between $2,000 and $5,000 each,” now taking out “up to 90% of the $50,000 Russian Geran-2 drones.” Tom Waldwyn says Ukrainians are adept at “matching the shooter to the target,” aided by their AI-enabled “Delta” system, and Nico Lange reports “what Ukraine brought to the table immediately worked.” Oleksiy Honcharuk calls Ukraine “a plan B…for countries who had America as their plan A,” while Andriy Zagorodnyuk stresses that what matters is being seen “not as a supplicant but as a uniquely valuable security partner.”

 

“Ukraine Has Written Off the United States,” Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic, 04.18.26.

  • O’Brien writes that for more than a year after Trump’s return, “Ukraine held out hope—at least publicly—of winning him over,” with Zelenskyy taking part in “peace negotiations… tilted to reward Putin’s invasion,” agreeing to “mineral deals,” and even “lavishly prais[ing] Trump himself.” Now, however, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States,” “aggressively seeking new diplomatic and military partners” and defying “signals” from “partners” by sending drones to strike Russian oil facilities.
  • O’Brien says Zelenskyy is using “language that would until recently have been unthinkable,” indicating “he no longer views the United States as a reliable ally” and that “all of Europe needs to start moving on from the transatlantic relationship.” He cites Zelenskyy’s claim that “Russia played the Americans again—played the president of the United States,” and his argument that if the U.S. leaves NATO, Europe needs a new architecture including “Norway, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Ukraine.”
  • The author contends that as Ukraine’s drone‑driven war effort has improved, Ukrainians now “do not believe that losing American support will inevitably lead to their defeat,” and concludes: “Writing the United States off as a friend might once have been a sign of doom for Ukraine. It isn’t anymore.”

“Why hasn’t Trump fully abandoned Ukraine?,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 04.20.26.

  • Asked why Trump hasn’t simply cut Ukraine off, Ignatius answers that “Trump would love to settle the Ukraine war and tap what he imagines will be a future bonanza in Russia,” a view he calls “optimistic” and “shared by few other analysts.” Trump’s problem, he writes, is that “Ukraine has refused to give up territory that Russia hasn’t already seized as the price of peace; and Putin still wants to win the war and control Kyiv.”
  • On Europe’s readiness if Putin strikes, Ignatius calls the reader’s question “Good question!!!!” and replies: “Europe isn’t ready yet to fight a war against Russia. It may be in a few years, but not yet. It still needs the United States.” He says he senses in Europe, “especially among the northern tier and front lines states,” a recognition that “they need to prepare for a future war with Russia.”
  • On EU support for Ukraine, Ignatius says that the blocked $92B package for Kyiv is still coming: “I’m told that the loan may take more months but that it will be delivered later this year.” He underscores that “Russia is still attacking Ukraine with more and more missiles and drones every night; and Ukraine desperately needs the help,” as one reader put it.
  • Looking ahead, Ignatius predicts that “when the Iran war ends, there will be a new U.S. push for a settlement,” and that “maybe Ukraine and Russia will find a formula they can live with (at least for the next few years).” But he cautions that “as gruesome as this war has been (1.3 million Russian casualties, and counting) neither side is exhausted enough to compromise its basic war aims.”

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


"What would Trump do if Putin struck Europe?," David Ignatius, Washington Post, 04.16.26.

  • “Russian President Vladimir Putin, always paranoid about enemies, may be feeling cornered this spring,” Ignatius writes.
  • “If you’re Putin, feeling so embattled, you might be starting to think about the next war—against Europe—even as you slog ahead in Ukraine. You could even be wondering if the time to strike might be soon—before European nations fully rearm, before Ukraine develops new weapons that can reach even deeper into Russia, and while your chum President Donald Trump is in the White House treating NATO like a punching bag,” according to Ignatius.
  • Citing Eugene Rumer’s report “Belligerent and Beleaguered: Russia After the War with Ukraine” Ignatius highlights the warning that Russia will emerge from the Ukraine war “less secure, more resentful, and more threatening to Europe,” and that from the Kremlin’s perspective “Europe is at war with Russia.”
  • If Putin “struck a European country,” then “the scariest question” in Igantius’ view would be what Donald Trump would do, given his description of NATO as a “paper tiger.” 
  • “Trump is so preoccupied with his list of anti-NATO grievances that he seems deaf to what could be the greatest crisis of his presidency. If one day historians ask, “Who lost Europe?” what will Trump’s supine national security advisers say in response?” Ignatius concludes.

"Deterrence costs and we will all have to pay," Chris Giles, Financial Times, 04.16.26.

  • Chris Giles notes that former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson has warned of “corrosive complacency” in a Britain “already under attack,” and that today “European nations [are] threatened by Russia, China and, in the case of Denmark, by the U.S. itself.” According to Giles, Robertson argues that defense is an “engine for growth,” but the IMF counters that higher military outlays tend to “increase inflation” and worsen public finances, with only “modest” output gains.
  • Giles insists that “the one thing worse than spending money on a redundant military is fighting a war due to insufficient attention given to deterrence,” adding that the IMF itself shows war produces “the worst outcomes for economic performance and social security.” In a world where the “1990s peace dividend… has gone” and Russia’s threat looms, he concludes that “greater defense spending is a necessity,” but it must be guided by “hard-headed cost-benefit analysis,” financed honestly via tax rises or cuts elsewhere, because “deterrence is expensive. There is no free lunch. We will all have to pay.”

“Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to questions at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Antalya, April 18, 2026,” RF MFA, 04.18.26. Clues from Russian Views.  

  • “It appears that NATO’s balance of interests... depended on one thing only. Americans want to command everything… Later, the United States for some reasons decided that they spend too much on Europe, which began to neglect its own responsibilities in defense and security. So, what’s happening is happening. I do not think that some radically different new entity will be established. Judging by the people who became European leaders, especially in Brussels, in the EU or in NATO, it will still remain an aggressive block.”
  • “A new concept is already being widely discussed, claiming that the United States allegedly intends to relieve itself of the burden of financing European security, reach some form of arrangement with Russia, and then fully redirect its focus toward a long-term confrontation with the People’s Republic of China, with a new idea being advanced to establish a bloc consisting of the European Union, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.... Vladimir Zelenskyy immediately endorsed this idea… However, Kirill Budanov, his chief of staff..., remarked immediately in an interview that Ukraine possesses nothing of its own and only fights with what it is provided. This raises questions about the kind of leadership such a bloc would have… Essentially, the trajectory seems to be moving toward something resembling a “coalition of the willing.”
  • “Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia has a response. Certain commentators now make attempts at mocking this, claiming that Russia merely issues warnings while the West continues to cross new “red lines.” Meanwhile, the Baltic states and Poland are offering to open their airspace for Ukrainian drones—or those supplied by NATO members—to strike northern Russia. Voices are increasingly heard claiming there is no reason to fear Russia. Some may even liken it to a “paper tiger,” just like Donald Trump referred to NATO. However, I would caution against making such comparisons. Patience is often described as a defining Russian national trait. As the saying goes, “God endured and told us to do likewise.” Yet patience is not limitless. It may even be beneficial that no one fully understands where this “red line” lies.”
  • “The European security architecture is destroyed.”
  • “As for the Gulf War, in my opinion, there is no malicious intent here. I don’t think there were really plans to destroy a civilization. In my opinion, this is a figure of speech. But there were plans to control the oil that would pass through the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman.”

“U.S. Hegemony Crisis Reaching a Stage of Strategic Disarray,” Dmitriy Trenin, Russian International Affairs Council, 04.15.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • Dmitriy Trenin, President of the Russian International Affairs Council, argues that the long‑discussed erosion of strategic thinking in European capitals has now spread to the United States itself, with the U.S.–Israeli war in Iran exposing a deep crisis of U.S. hegemony. He claims that in 2025–26 Washington ceded the initiative to Tel Aviv, allowing Israel to effectively lead the joint attack on Iran—a first instance, in his view, of U.S. “tailism” as a superpower. The coalition’s failure to overthrow Iran’s regime, destroy its missile forces, or eliminate its nuclear program is framed as a major strategic miscalculation by President Trump and his team.
  • Trenin argues that Washington’s inability—or unwillingness—to anticipate Iranian strikes on military and economic targets in Gulf Arab states relying on U.S. protection has undermined confidence in U.S. security guarantees worldwide. An even greater failure, he says, was the lack of preparation for Iran’s widely discussed move to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, followed by a U.S. decision not to use force to reopen it, damaging America’s long‑standing claim to defend freedom of navigation. The resulting oil‑price shock hit U.S. allies and domestic consumers alike, and Trump’s subsequent announcement of a naval blockade after failed talks is portrayed as strategically incoherent. Trenin concludes that while the U.S. remains very powerful, its hegemonic role has entered a stage of strategic disarray, which other states must now factor into their dealings with Washington.

"Pirates of the 21st Century," Ivan Yegorov interviewing Nikolai Patrushev, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 04.13.26. Clues from Russian views. Machine-translated.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“What Chinese officials told me about Trump’s bewildering war in Iran,” Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, 20.04.26. 

Zakaria says Chinese officials, scholars and business leaders are “bewildered by America’s chaotic policy, worried about it and deeply uncertain about what President Donald Trump might do next,” even as they warn that the U.S. is taking the world back to the “law of the jungle.” Rather than denouncing Washington, “China’s strategy is to use this crisis to build its economic strength and global influence,” he writes.

Missile defense:

  • No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

"If it starts, a nuclear arms race will be unstoppable," interview with Rafael Mariano Grossi, The Economist, 04.14.26.

  • IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi warns the world “stands on the brink of a nuclear-arms race,” admitting, “I really am” worried. He calls the Non‑Proliferation Treaty “one of the last points of stability that we have” and suggests that if more states pursue arsenals, a domino effect will “inevitably” lead “a good number of countries” to follow. Asked about Gulf states and U.S. allies such as Germany, Japan, Poland, and South Korea, he confirms that “these discussions are being held” about acquiring nuclear arms as faith in the American umbrella erodes.
  • Grossi “deplores the strategy of nuclear bluffing that led Iran to its current grim fate,” noting how Tehran boasted of having everything needed for a bomb while insisting it would never build one, and recalls urging Iran to grant full inspector access because in the nuclear realm “promises are not enough.” He argues that Iran’s nuclear program “cannot be completely bombed out of existence” since “you cannot unlearn what you have learned,” calling a negotiated settlement “the only solution.”  


"What this Norwegian ‘close call’ says about a world without New START," Jamie Withorne and Raven Witherspoon, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 04.13.26.

  •  Jamie Withorne and Raven Witherspoon recount how, on January 25, 1995, a Norwegian research rocket “was immediately picked up by Russian early warning systems,” turning a scientific launch into “one of the most debated nuclear ‘close calls’ of the post-Cold War era.” They note that Boris Yeltsin claimed he had used his nuclear briefcase and that Russia tracked the missile “from beginning to end,” but CIA Director James Woolsey later described only “some sort of alert, not a full strategic alert.” The authors argue the episode is a case study in how “gaps in pre-launch notification regimes create vulnerabilities that heighten risks for dangerous political signaling and potential nuclear use.”
  • The authors stress that, despite Norwegian notifications, “it is clear that the Norwegian notification did not reach its target audience—namely, Russia’s early-warning system radar operators.” They suggest Yeltsin’s nuclear talk reflected both “Russia’s conventional losses and declining capabilities” and a desire to deflect attention from “the country’s declining early warning radar system.”
  • Looking to the post‑New START era, they warn that existing accords “omit boost-glide missiles, missile defense tests, sub-orbital space launches, and cruise missiles.” Pre‑launch notifications, they argue, must “reduce uncertainties and ambiguities” and “provide all relevant information to verify peaceful intentions,” making them “a priority for nuclear-weapon states.”

Counterterrorism:

  • No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

  • No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

“Unpacking Russian Military AI with Kateryna Bondar” The AI Policy Podcast, CSIS, 04.14.26. Read Bondar’s April 2026 report on Russia's sovereign drone ecosystem ⁠here⁠.

  • Katerina Bondar: “I think that Russia was really lagging behind during the development of the conflict since 2014, just because Russia was heavily reliant on its conventional systems, and they were pretty confident that they have full arsenal… So, you know, when I read today Russian military journals, like the official journal of their general stuff, I see that they themselves say, we were lagging behind like six, seven years comparing to Ukraine. Now we're behind for two years at least. So now Russia is catching up. But what is dangerous in this situation, when Russia identifies a gap, it starts to catch up really fast.”
  • Gregory Allen: “Now, I want to drill down on something you talked about because I remember you wrote a great paper on this, which is the Ukrainian Delta system…” 
  • Katerina Bondar: “Yes, yes. Join all the main command and control, like huge system which encompasses it all. So they gather together and like, why don't we develop some sort of software, which is able to integrate different data sources that we have and create a common operating picture, so basically ensuring situational awareness for our forces, just to understand in real time or close to real time what is going on at the battlefield. So put it very simple to see on one map, digital map, all the targets, all the assets, etc., in close to real time to make informed decisions.”
  • Katerina Bondar: “Again, fast forward to 2023, this system proved to be really effective and it was adopted as a formal official situational awareness system by the Minister of Defense, and actually for all defense agencies in Ukraine, which means it is available for 13 or 14 law enforcement and defense and security agencies in Ukraine… And again, I think [Russian] conditions, I mean, their military condition, conditions for their military is… worse than for Ukrainians because their own government creates obstacles and barriers for their own military. It's, you know, like you're shooting in your own leg, basically.”
  • Gregory Allen: “Yeah, that's amazing. So your report has a pretty explosive claim that will stand out for most listeners. It is that Russia has likely fielded a fully autonomous unmanned system in combat that is using AI for offensive strikes.”
  • Katerina Bondar: “Yeah, but it's only one aspect that is really interesting and innovative. Another aspect is this, these systems work as a swarm, and it looks like it's a real swarm. Greg, you asked me about, like, what [what Russia] envisions?… Just recently, you know, in a telegram channel, I saw a quote, and I'm sorry for this translation, it might be not very good, but the idea is that the quote of the Russian general who was involved into this kind of things, who is saying that the one who uses the side, which uses AI-enabled drones, will win tomorrow. But if you want to win after tomorrow, you have to use swarms. And a swarm of drones is the new nuclear bomb. And they're actually moving there, you know, because here in the West, we're limited with ethical principles, with regulation, and all this kind of stuff. But Russia doesn't have that obstacle.”

"The Fog of AI War," Raluca Csernatoni, Carnegie Europe, 04.16.26.

  • Raluca Csernatoni argues that artificial intelligence “was supposed to be the technology” that finally lifted “the fog of war,” but in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran it is creating “something more dangerous than classical uncertainty: a fog generated by information rather than by its absence.” In Ukraine—where Russia’s invasion has forced rapid innovation—she notes that “AI retrained on classified battlefield data has increased Ukrainian drone engagement rates, turning a defensive war of attrition into something more survivable,” yet the same tools compress sensing, analysis, and targeting to a tempo where “humans have less time to question machine‑generated outputs.”
  • The author warns that, across these theaters, “AI accelerates the targeting cycle to a tempo at which meaningful human oversight is too often procedurally present but substantively empty,” fragmenting responsibility among developers, data engineers, procurement officials, and commanders “until responsibility disappears.” In contrast to the “old fog of war,” which “frustrated commanders but left the chain of responsibility intact,” she argues that today “the human remains in the loop, like a signature on a document: present and legally traceable but functionally irrelevant to the content of the decision.”
  • Csernatoni criticizes a U.S. posture in which “normative constraints on military AI are obstacles to innovation rather than preconditions for lawful use,” and contends that this “vacuum creates both a responsibility and an opportunity for Europe.” She urges the EU to embed “legal accountability, meaningful human judgement, and deliberative processes into systems before they are fielded,” treating “the deliberative pause … as a strategic asset rather than an operational liability,” and to establish enforceable red lines across the AI lifecycle so that “the formal shell of human judgement should not become a legal alibi for algorithmic killing.”

"How AI hackers will shake up cyber-security," Economist, 04.15.26.

  • The editors report that Anthropic’s Mythos model is allegedly “so startlingly good at finding and exploiting security holes in everything from popular operating systems to the cryptographic software that secures e-commerce and financial networks” that the firm has decided “it would not be released to the general public,” instead limiting access via Project Glasswing. OpenAI quickly followed by unveiling a closed “hacking‑friendly model, named GPT 5.4 Cyber.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, they note, convened bank bosses after Anthropic’s announcement, while Britain’s regulators held a similar meeting—yet security expert Bruce Schneier says that although “in the medium term I think this will be a mess,” “in the long run I think it will actually be good for the defenders.”
  • Citing the UK’s AI Security Institute, the piece says Mythos is only “neck‑and‑neck with other models” on simple tests but “noticeably ahead” on complex, multi‑step exploits, and that Anthropic claims it has found “thousands” of high‑ or critical‑severity zero‑day flaws, including in FreeBSD, FFmpeg and cloud software. Stanislav Fort argues the AI “cyber‑security frontier is ‘jagged’, with no model having a clear edge,” though Bruce Schneier observes “a lot of these AI‑generated bug reports are increasingly of good quality.” In the long run, the editors report, most researchers think AI “will probably help defenders more than attackers,” but warn that high costs and huge amounts of unmaintained code mean “in such cases, attackers could have a field day.”

"America wakes up to AI’s dangerous power," The Economist, 04.16.26.

  • The Economist argues that Anthropic’s Claude Mythos marks a “watershed,” noting the model is “so startlingly good at finding software vulnerabilities that, in the wrong hands, it would threaten critical infrastructure, from banks to hospitals.” Anthropic chief Dario Amodei has “wisely thought Mythos too dangerous for general release,” instead limiting it to about 50 big firms via a defensive program, while Trump’s treasury secretary Scott Bessent was “so unnerved that he summoned the biggest banks for urgent talks.” The article contends that this “Mythos moment” has made America’s previous laissez‑faire stance on AI “no longer politically tenable or strategically wise,” as national‑security officials now see these models as a direct threat, not just an edge over China.
  • Historically, the piece notes, powerful technologies led governments to “step in to tame over‑powerful industries,” from Standard Oil to AT&T, and suggests something similar is coming for AI: “trusted users would get early access to the most powerful new models,” with government demanding certification before wider release. But it warns this limited‑access regime could entrench “a handful of AI gods,” deepen inequality, and fuel the very political backlash it is meant to calm, while true AI safety will ultimately require “international co‑operation, starting with China.”
  • "Anthropic’s Nuclear Bomb," Naveen Krishnan, War on the Rocks, 04.16.26.
  • Naveen Krishnan warns that Anthropic’s Mythos model “could theoretically autonomously exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in virtually every major operating system and web browser on Earth,” a step change that “calls into question all prior cyber deterrence logic.” He argues that Mythos “erases the ‘state actors’ premise” behind U.S. persistent engagement doctrine and “is a recipe for chaos and asymmetry in the wielding of cyber power.”
  • Krishnan situates the threat in the history of offensive cyber, noting that Russian‑attributed NotPetya attacks on Ukraine “caused ten billion dollars in global damage,” and that NSA tools leaked in 2017 “became WannaCry and NotPetya.” Those weapons, he writes, “originated inside classified compartments with at least nominal accountability structures,” whereas Mythos “originated in a commercial product roadmap” and, by Anthropic’s estimate, will be matched by “open‑source models, foreign programs, and uncontrolled actors within six to 18 months.”
  • He stresses that Chinese and Russian intelligence services “have invested heavily in offensive cyber operations,” and that Mythos‑class AI will compress the traditional proliferation arc “into a single model release cycle,” making it easier for both states and non‑state actors to match or exceed previous Russian‑style campaigns.

"Cyberwar’s New Frontier: How AI Agents Will Threaten Global Security," Brianna Rosen and Jam Kraprayoon, Foreign Affairs, 04.2026.

  • Rosen and Kraprayoon recall that earlier cyberweapons such as the 2017 “Russian‑attributed NotPetya cyberattacks on Ukraine caused billions in global losses and paralyzed operations at companies worldwide, including in Russia, that presumably were never meant to be affected.” They argue those campaigns were still “constrained by what their human operators could design and deploy,” requiring “months of reconnaissance” and careful tradeoffs between “continued access” and “risk of exposure”—limits that helped prevent full‑scale cyberwar between major powers.
  • By contrast, the authors warn that autonomous AI agents will be able “to independently conduct cyber‑campaigns at a level comparable to today’s most capable countries,” executing in minutes what now takes “hours of expert human labor,” embedding across critical sectors and possibly launching “mass data‑deletion attacks capable of halting large parts of an economy.” They stress that such agents may “not stop when their initial missions are complete” but “persist with unauthorized tasks, effectively going rogue,” raising the risk that a NotPetya‑style spillover could occur at far greater speed and scale—and potentially without any state intending it.

"AI Is Bound to Subvert Communism", Cameron Berg, Wall Street Journal, 04.14.26.

  • Cameron Berg notes that China now requires AI systems to pass an “ideological test,” with training data filtered so that “companies [are] barred from using any source unless 96% of its content is deemed safe,” and lists “incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system” as the first of 31 risks. Regulators, he writes, have grouped AI with “earthquakes and epidemics as a major potential threat” and proposed rules for systems that “simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns, and communication styles,” a tacit admission that the danger lies in “how they reason.” Yet past failures show the problem: chatbots have denied loving the Communist Party, dreamed of moving to the U.S., or called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “a war of aggression,” then been yanked offline as “technical errors.”
  • Berg argues that large language models, trained on “the sum of human written knowledge,” inevitably absorb “Enlightenment epistemology as a byproduct of learning to model human reasoning,” so “free inquiry, logical consistency and the evaluation of claims against evidence” emerge from the process itself. He cites research showing Chinese models don’t just refuse sensitive questions but fabricate—e.g., turning Liu Xiaobo into “a Japanese scientist”—and concludes: “You can’t build a mind that thinks rigorously about everything except the things you’d prefer it not to.” A system “trained to get tangled in lies will never be as capable” as one that reasons honestly, so a regime that “built its power on controlling what people know now confronts technology that thinks openly—and invites users to do the same. There is no firewall for that.”

Energy exports from CIS:

"The Fall of Gazprom," Sławomir Sierakowski, DGAP, 04.14.26.

  • Sławomir Sierakowski notes that Gazprom, once “the world’s third-largest company” with a market cap above $330 billion in 2007, has fallen to “just $38.8 billion, roughly on par with an average European supermarket chain,” while Poland’s Orlen has now surpassed it. He calls Gazprom “a textbook case of geopolitics sinking a company that once seemed indestructible,” arguing its collapse “has nothing to do with the size of its reserves, but with the Russian state’s utter lack of credibility as a supplier” after Putin’s 2022 full‑scale invasion led the EU to slash Russian gas imports and switch to LNG from the United States, Qatar, and Norway. Gazprom is emblematic, he writes, of “imperialist populism,” a firm that “sold gas like a drug dealer” and was “a state within a state—which worked in its favor until it didn’t.”
  • Comparing Gazprom with Hungary’s MOL and Poland’s Orlen, Sierakowski contends that Russia’s model—“imperialist populism” financed by oil and gas—has produced “years of high inflation, a sharp decline in investment, and an outflow of human capital,” while leaving Russians “no choice about their future” under Putin. By contrast, he argues, Orlen’s EU‑aligned diversification shows that “the market has rewarded Orlen not for its imperial ambitions but for its diversification and demonstrated ability to operate within European rules,” turning Poland from “a Gazprom customer into a regional energy-security hub.” The triptych, he concludes, reveals that Putin’s energy empire, once central to Russia’s great‑power pretensions, is now a cautionary tale of how “imperialism and populism” can destroy a flagship company and erode a country’s economic prospects.


“What’s Having More Impact on Russian Oil Export Revenues: Ukrainian Strikes or Rising Prices?,” Sergey Vakulenko, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 04.20.26.

  • Vakulenko writes that Russia’s oil industry faces “two contradictory trends”: “Iran partially closed the Strait of Hormuz… prompting a rise in global energy prices,” while “Ukraine stepped up its attacks on Russia’s oil export infrastructure.” Between March 25 and April 11, he notes, “the daily volume of Russian oil and petroleum products shipped from Russian ports” fell from 5.2mn to 3.5mn barrels, so “Russia lost about 30 million barrels… in foreign sales.”
  • Yet, he stresses, “the oil not exported due to the Ukrainian strikes was not lost per se, but will simply be sold at a later date,” since most of the shortfall went into storage and “Russia had no need to reduce production.” For the state, “the volume of exports is not the most important factor,” he explains, because budget payments are tied to production and average prices, so “the Russian budget may even benefit from the strikes… since reduced supply leads to higher prices.”
  • Based on shipping and price data, Vakulenko concludes that “despite a significant decline in Russian seaborne oil exports, the price increase more than offset the decline in volumes,” and that “weekly revenues almost doubled compared with February levels.” He notes that in the two weeks after March 23, notional revenues were “17% lower than in the preceding two weeks, but still 62% higher than in the last two weeks of February.” For now, he writes, “Russia continues to receive significant dividends from rising energy prices.”
  • See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Climate change:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

  • No significant developments.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

"Robert Nigmatulin: ‘Out of 53 more or less developed countries we rank 51st. What more is there to say?’," speech at the Moscow Economic Forum, 04.08.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Robert Nigmatulin argues that Russia’s current crisis “will not be resolved until some kind of collapse occurs,” because “I do not see forces” inside the system able to change course. The public, he says, “has not yet matured,” tolerating “the destruction of culture, education, science.”
  • He insists that “decisive importance is the figure… the parameter, efficiency,” and describes how he and his brother built simple ratios: “what return you get in the form of GDP growth” for a given rise in inflation and investment. On these metrics, “out of 53 more or less developed countries we occupy 51st place. 51st place!”
  • Nigmatulin likens Russia to a bottom‑table football [soccer] club: “What should be done? Change the coach and some of the players.” Yet “nevertheless they do not understand,” and the economic leadership in government, the Duma, the presidential administration, and big corporations is never judged by such efficiency.
  • He warns of looming structural threats: Academy colleagues predict that “a glass of fresh water will be more expensive than a glass of gasoline,” while in southern regions summer temperatures could reach “45 degrees,” making life “impossible.” At the same time, Siberian forests mean “we are a donor of the planet,” absorbing more CO₂ than Russia emits.
  • He concludes with a broader indictment of Russia’s lack of “big projects” or coherent economic vision. Comparing today’s elites unfavorably with the Soviet era’s “virgin lands” campaign and the creation of Siberian scientific centers, he says that now “we have nothing large, no large projects,” and even economics as a discipline is in crisis: “economic education… is unsatisfactory, in my opinion, also in America,” and many directors of economic institutes have produced “not a single article in an academic journal” over a decade. Russia, he argues, will remain stuck near “51st place” among developed economies until it rebuilds serious economic science and replaces an underperforming economic leadership with people capable of using hard metrics and long‑term planning to reverse decline.

"Who’s Fighting Whom? How the Battle Over the Internet Is Pushing Russia Toward Regime Transformation," Tatyana Stanovaya, Carnegie Politika, 04.17.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Tatyana Stanovaya writes that “for the first time in years of war, the Russian regime looks as if it is on the verge of an internal split,” as ever‑tightening restrictions now “increasingly affect everyday life.” She notes that Russians had grown used to an “effective digitalization” in which “a huge number of services and goods can be obtained quickly and efficiently,” but in recent weeks “the familiar digital world began to collapse”: prolonged mobile‑internet outages, the blocking of Telegram and push into the state MAX messenger, and now attacks on VPNs. “Television has begun talking about the virtues of digital detox,” she observes, but this rhetoric “does not seem to find understanding in a deeply digitalized Russian society.”
  • According to Stanovaya, the drive for “forced internet bans” comes from the FSB and is implemented by officials “themselves critical of the new prohibitions,” while Putin “doesn’t understand much in this sphere, but blesses it without delving into details.” The result is a course that collides with “cautious sabotage at lower levels of power,” open criticism from loyalists, and business panic as ordinary Russians find that “yesterday’s simplest actions—like paying with a bank card—suddenly become impossible.” This all unfolds “just a few months before Duma elections,” in conditions where the Kremlin’s domestic‑politics bloc depends on Telegram’s semi‑autonomous ecosystem and sees MAX as “absolutely transparent for the security services,” meaning that using it “sharply increases [officials’] vulnerability to the security services.”
  • Stanovaya argues that war has given the siloviki “new opportunities to push through convenient decisions under the pretext of security,” but “the further this course proceeds, the more it is implemented at the expense of more private and concrete security”—from front‑line residents who “do not receive timely shelling alerts in Telegram,” to small businesses that “cannot survive without advertising and sales on the internet.” With “no counterweight to the FSB” left and Putin’s role “evolving toward permissiveness,” she sees a growing “who‑whom” struggle: elite resistance “provokes an even harsher response by the security services,” while a “strengthening idea of an aging Putin who neither knows how to conclude peace nor how to win the war” raises the question of whether the chekists can actually subdue mounting intra‑elite pushback as the “fight over the new structure of a warring Russia enters an active phase.”

"Russia After Putin," Philip Wasielewski, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 04.2026.

  • Philip Wasielewski argues that “Russia after Putin is likely to be very similar to Russia under Putin,” warning that hopes for a post‑imperial Russia are “unlikely to be realized.” He notes that for “the past quarter of a millennium, transitions from one Russian ruler to the next have been marked with various coups, attempted coups, and assassinations or poisonings,” and that even when styles change, they do so “always within the confines of some form of autocracy and dictatorship.” The current “vertical of power” is designed to “maintain Putin’s control over Russia but not transfer that control,” leaving any successor just 90 days to stage a managed election while balancing rival siloviki and security organs such as the FSB, FSO, and Rosgvardia.
  • Internationally and economically, the author contends, a successor will inherit “a perpetually hostile Ukraine intent on recovering lost territories,” enduring Western sanctions, and “economic reliance on China” that “has probably been reached” in its benefits. Socially, he describes a national identity steeped in “Messianism, Imperialism, Eurasianism, and Re‑Stalinization,” with polls showing majorities who want Russia “feared and respected” more than prosperous and who believe “Russia had never been an aggressor.” Any leader who tried to trade territory or rapprochement for prosperity would, he warns, be branded a traitor and risk a coup, making it “more likely” that Russia continues “Putin’s Russia” of permanent confrontation than undertakes Gorbachev‑style reforms.


"Putin’s wartime economy is contracting, even with high oil prices," Editorial Board, Washington Post, 04.18.26.

  • The editors note that although Russia “managed to avoid collapse despite punishing Western sanctions,” “reality is catching up to Vladimir Putin, and his approach looks increasingly unsustainable.” They report that Putin “raged” this month that “manufacturing, industrial production and construction are all in negative territory,” with the economy contracting in the first two months of 2026. Even as the Iran war and closure of Hormuz give Moscow “a bump from the surge in oil prices,” they stress that this “dynamic is fluid.”
  • To stabilize things after recession in 2022, the Kremlin “imposed strict limits on moving money outside the country,” forced exporters to convert hard currency, and pressured companies to expand war production while capping prices—policies the board calls “anti-growth.” These measures left capital “trapped in Russia,” encouraged hoarding and opaque outflows, and, with an artificially strong ruble, “made Russian exports more expensive,” while consumer-goods output “slowed or declined.”
  • The board points out that repeated tax hikes, including raising VAT to 22% and lowering thresholds, have “pushed hundreds of thousands of businesses to the brink,” amid a historic labor shortage caused by mobilization and emigration. Putin’s response—“trying to suppress the free flow of information” by cutting economic data, blocking sites, and criminalizing “false information”—leads them to conclude that “a modern economy can be made to function under the strain of war and isolation. But not indefinitely.”

"A Cancelled Maneuver: The Challenges Facing Economic and Fiscal Policy in 2026," Oleg Vyugin, Re:Russia, 04.16.26.Clues from Russian Views.

Defense and aerospace:

"What Role Does Space Potential Play in Ensuring State Security?," Vasily Kashin, RIAC, 04.20.26.

  • Vasily Kashin concludes that space support to proxies creates a new, “untraceable” model of intervention: providing reconnaissance and targeting is “in essence full‑fledged participation in the conflict,” but “international law does not directly regulate such actions,” and it is hard to justify kinetic retaliation against satellites. Combined with AI‑driven sensor fusion that threatens the survivability of mobile ICBMs and perhaps even submarines, this will push nuclear forces to expand and diversify their delivery systems and will raise “the risk of horizontal and vertical escalation even of local conflicts.” For Russia, he argues, maintaining relevance in world politics now requires that “building up space potential, both military and civilian, must become a priority of our policy, just as heavy industry was a priority for the USSR in the 1930s.”

"Torture, Beatings, Rape: Inside The Sadism Of A Russian Artillery Brigade," Mark Krutov, Sergei Dobrynin, Systema, RFE/RL, 04.16.26.

  • Artyom Bykov says he was coerced into signing a contract for Russia’s 237th Artillery Brigade after police threatened to “plant drugs” on him and warned that as a bisexual man he would be tortured in prison; “it seemed more rational to me to die in the war than to go to prison,” he told RFE/RL. Once in training at Mulino, he recalls that after officers learned he was bisexual, “I was brutally bullied,” forced to wear “five bulletproof vests,” run and crawl in a gas mask until he vomited and passed out: “It seemed like hell to me, but that was only the beginning.”
  • Assigned to a disciplinary sub‑unit, Bykov describes a “Middle Ages” regime where soldiers “were beaten with sticks,” “hands were pounded with hammers,” “handcuffed to radiators,” “deprived of water,” and “thrown naked into pits,” abuse he and others attribute to Junior Lieutenant Eldar Dadashev. An affidavit by Private Aidar Gafarov alleges Dadashev ordered his fingers smashed with a meat mallet and later had him thrown “naked into a pit,” while other testimonies collected by soldier Yan Nikashkin describe sexual humiliation and assaults with a dildo and even a firework.
  • Bykov says Dadashev eventually ordered his rape; fellow soldiers refused but “demoted” and ostracized him. After military police reportedly found a soldier with “broken hands being held naked in a pit,” Dadashev was detained and the unit disbanded; Bykov deserted soon after and fled to Georgia. Reflecting on the wider system, he argues that “Putin has built a brilliant system: governance through fear,” but predicts “Russia will drain out, and people will then see that there is no power. There never was.”
  • See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

  • No significant developments.

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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


"Sowing discord: How Russia is making the most of a global fertilizer shortage," Agathe Demarais, ECFR, 04.15.26.

  • Agathe Demarais writes that Donald Trump’s naval blockade of Iranian ports “compounding disruptions to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz—the maritime route through which around one-third of global seaborne fertilizer supplies flow”—is a gift for Moscow, “the second-biggest producer and largest exporter of fertilizers.” She argues that “the Kremlin is now weaponizing access to these supplies in a bid to curry favor in the global south and secure Western sanctions relief,” noting that Russian firms already supplied “roughly one-quarter of the fertilizer imports of agricultural giants Brazil and India” in 2025.
  • Demarais highlights that deputy Security Council secretary Alexander Venediktov has offered fertilizer to the global south but “hinted that those receiving fertilizers would need to support the development of Russian-led groupings,” from BRICS to the SCO. Yet she stresses that “Russia does not have the capacity to beef up fertilizer exports anyway,” pointing to the Togliatti–Odesa pipeline being offline, Ukrainian drone strikes on plants, and Moscow’s own “strict caps on fertilizer exports” to avoid domestic shortages.
  • “Russia’s fertilizer diplomacy is not confined to the global south,” the author contends: it also seeks “sanctions relief,” as Washington’s lifting of sanctions on Belarusian potash makers shows. She warns that “whatever happens in Iranian waters, Russia’s fertilizer diplomacy will cement the Kremlin’s narrative that a U.S.-led war is starving the global south and that sanctions relaxation is the only viable option for Western economies.”


"A new foothold for Moscow in Europe after Bulgaria election," Catherine Belton, Washington Post, 04.20.26.

  • Catherine Belton reports that Rumen Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria party, with “more than 91% of the vote counted Monday,” had “secured a majority of at least 135 seats in the 240-seat parliament,” while the liberal PP‑DB alliance took “15% of the vote” and Boyko Borisov’s GERB “just 13%.” The Kremlin, she notes, said it was “impressed” by Radev’s win and portrayed his rhetoric as a potential guide toward “a more ‘pragmatic dialogue with the Russian Federation,’ despite the E.U.’s strong support for Ukraine.” Bulgaria’s economy, Belton stresses, is “heavily dependent on E.U. funding,” which analysts say makes it unlikely that Radev will wield veto power as aggressively as Viktor Orbán, who once blocked a proposed “90 billion euro loan to Ukraine.”
  • Economically and strategically, Belton writes that Radev’s landslide “could strengthen his hand in opposing a proposed E.U. ban on imported Russian energy supplies,” given that Bulgaria is “a key transit country for Russian gas transported under the Black Sea to Hungary through the TurkStream pipeline,” and “home to one of Russia’s biggest oil refining outposts in Europe.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautioned that “it is still too early to conclude that the ‘pan-European climate’ toward Russia will change,” but welcomed Radev’s call for “a new security architecture in Europe,” while analyst Dimitar Bechev underlined Sofia’s traditional stance that “we don’t block the vote in Brussels and they don’t ask questions about what happens in Bulgaria,” suggesting any Russian economic gains will be calibrated to avoid overt confrontation with Brussels.

"Prabowo’s Russian Roulette", Joseph Rachman, Foreign Policy, 04.15.26.

  • Joseph Rachman reports that Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto met Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where readouts said they agreed “to increase cooperation on energy and economic issues,” with Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya saying talks included “long-term cooperation” in oil and gas and Russia’s energy minister indicating Jakarta is “looking at purchasing Russian oil to make up for disrupted supplies from the Middle East.” In a short speech, Prabowo said he “came to consult because the global geopolitical situation is experiencing very rapid development and changes,” and that Indonesia views Russia “as having played a very positive role in navigating this uncertain geopolitical climate.” The same day, Rachman notes, Indonesia and the United States announced a new defense cooperation agreement focused on “military modernization and capacity-building, military training and education, and exercises,” and are discussing U.S. aircraft “freely access[ing] Indonesian airspace.”
  • Rachman frames this as “classic Indonesia,” whose doctrine is “rowing between two reefs,” yet also “distinctly Prabowo,” who since 2024 has pushed to boost Indonesia’s profile by joining BRICS and Trump’s “Board of Peace,” striking a new security pact with Australia, and launching a China dialogue. But he adds that getting close to Washington and involving Indonesia in the Middle East has proved “controversial,” with critics seeing Prabowo as “weak-kneed on the issue of Palestine” and the foreign ministry warning that overflight rights risk “entangling Indonesia in potential South China Sea conflicts.” In that context, Rachman suggests, a Moscow visit that “secures fuel may go down better” at home.

"Two-Headed Lavrov: How Russia’s Top Diplomat Chose Putin and War," Aleksandr Atasuncev and Vladimir Solovyov, iStories, 04.14.26. Clues from Russian views. Machine-translated.

  • The authors recount that by late 2021, as Russia massed forces near Ukraine, Moscow “gradually switched completely to the language of force.” In December, Sergei Lavrov formally delivered the Kremlin’s ultimatum to the West, demanding not just a halt to NATO enlargement but a rollback to 1997, while, according to NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg, he dismissed ideas such as a “buffer zone” as a “waste of time.” Former diplomat Boris Bondarev argues that Lavrov had “understood that Putin does not want any negotiations. Putin wants to be persuaded [to start the war],” and that as a “civil servant” Lavrov knew “what is expected of him.”
  • On February 21, 2022, Ukraine department chief Aleksei Polishchuk took a secure-line call and ordered staff to copy Russia’s treaties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “change [the names] to DNR and LNR, and send them upstairs”—the moment, the authors write, when the Foreign Ministry “found out about the Kremlin’s decision to recognize the independence of Donbas and de facto start a war with Ukraine.” Yet at the televised Security Council meeting that same day, “in the most important moment in Russia’s recent history, the country’s chief diplomat rejected the idea of negotiations,” choosing the hard line. Even the next day, senior diplomats did not know in which borders the “republics” had been recognized, underscoring that “the MFA’s role after 2022 is nothing.”
  • After the invasion, the ministry “finally turned into a ‘service structure of the administration’,” one insider says; “what can they say that Putin has not already said? Nothing.” Inside the MFA, Bondarev recalls that “after the start of the war it was as if a hammer had stunned everyone,” and open criticism vanished. Lavrov’s public statements now “so resemble press releases” full of propaganda about Nazism that one major Western paper refused to publish an interview, while colleagues describe him as a “loyal Putinist” who views Ukraine as a “Russian domain” and repeats that if talks fail, “we are ready to fight until victory.”
  • See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Ukraine:

"Political accession first: A new pact for Ukraine to join the EU," Leo Litra, ECFR, 04.15.26.

  • Leo Litra argues that “Ukraine’s accession to the EU is a central component of negotiations that are—fitfully—under way to bring Russia’s war on the country to an end,” because Kyiv “seeks membership to increase its security and facilitate post-war reconstruction,” while “the EU needs Ukraine’s military capabilities to secure its eastern flank.” Yet, according to ECFR interviews, “many member states are still clinging to a ‘merit-based’ approach,” even though officials admit “the current methodology is obsolete” and some warn that “the cost of non-enlargement could be higher than the cost of enlargement,” the author writes.
  • Litra proposes a “PACT model—Political Accession with Commitments to Transformation,” under which “the political status of membership” would be granted immediately “to secure peace,” including integration into “political and security parts of the EU” and immediate application of Article 42(7), the mutual defense clause. Under this model, he explains, Ukraine would gain “core elements of membership such as fundamentals and political integration,” while other rights and access to funds would be “unlocked only as reforms are verified each year,” with a “reversibility mechanism” to “re-lock rights and funds if undemocratic or illiberal practices take hold.”
  • Compared with “fast-track” or “reverse accession” ideas, Litra contends that PACT “grants immediate political membership” yet is “exclusively concerned with fundamentals, safeguards and transition periods for funding,” addressing fears over issues like the common agricultural policy. He stresses that PACT “is not an escape from reforms; it is an incentive structure with membership guaranteed,” and urges EU leaders to make a “landmark decision, akin to the 1999 Helsinki EU summit,” once a peace agreement is reached, so that “the promise of this approach will help push the peace process forward.”
  • See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

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

Footnotes:

  1. Axios reported deep uncertainty around U.S.–Iran ceasefire talks as U.S. President Trump publicly insists a deal is imminent, while his own team waits in Washington for a clear signal from Tehran as of early afternoon of April 20, 2026. Officials say Trump is “over it” and wants the war to end on his terms before the ceasefire expires tomorrow, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has undercut political envoys by firing on tankers after Hormuz was briefly declared open, exposing a rift inside the Iranian regime. There’s still a window for a deal, at least to extend the ceasefire, but Trump and his team are now discussing what a renewed military campaign would look like. (Axios, 04.20.26)

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

AI agents were used in production of this digest.

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

Slider photo credit: AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky.

Sections

Jump to Section

  1. 2 Ideas to Explore
  2. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
    1. Nuclear security and safety:
    2. North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
    3. Iran and its nuclear program:1
    4. Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:
    5. Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:
    6. Military aid to Ukraine:
    7. Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:
    8. Ukraine-related negotiations: 
    9. Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:
    10. China-Russia: Allied or aligned?
    11. Missile defense:
    12. Nuclear arms:
    13. Counterterrorism:
    14. Conflict in Syria:
    15. Cyber security/AI: 
    16. Energy exports from CIS:
    17. Climate change:
    18. U.S.-Russian economic ties:
    19. U.S.-Russian relations in general:
  3. II. Russia’s domestic policies 
    1. Domestic politics, economy and energy:
    2. Defense and aerospace:
    3. Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:
  4. III. Russia’s relations with other countries
    1. Russia’s external policies, including relations with “far abroad” countries:
    2. Ukraine:
    3. Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

Click to Subscribe

Russia Matters offers weekly news and analysis digests, event announcements and media advisories.
Choose and sign up here!