6 Ideas to Explore

1. The U.S. is “at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” Henry Kissinger told WSJ. Kissinger believes that a post-invasion Ukraine “has to be treated as a member of NATO,” but still foresees a settlement in which Russia keeps Crimea and parts of Donbas.
2. The “lofty expectations” of a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Kherson area will be “hard to meet,” according to the Economist. The Ukrainian units in the Kherson area lack the personnel advantage, and the five brigades that have done the most demanding fighting for Ukraine are already bled and exhausted, according to the magazine. RAND’s Dara Massicot also believes Ukraine may have lost too many troops to carry out new large offensives, but notes that Kyiv can still complicate Russia’s ability to annex Kherson and other areas in the south. To do so, the “Ukrainian military must maintain a contested frontline, attack Russian command-and-control systems and steadily thin out Russian forces,” she writes in Foreign Affairs.
3. Russia may adopt “ever more irresponsible defense export policies” in pursuit of cash since the imposition of Western sanctions, according to Jennifer Kavanagh and Frederic Wehrey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. To manage these risks, the U.S. “should not rush to fill any ... gap left by declining Russian arms sales, even if other countries stand to gain a greater share of the market” in the Middle east, they write in Foreign Affairs.
4. Western sanctions are turning Russia into a “giant Eurasian Iran” which will lose “a very high degree of its strategic autonomy” to China, according to Alexander Gabuev. “China will benefit greatly” from Russia’s estrangement from the West, with Beijing “unlikely to bail Moscow out or significantly help modernize the Russian economy,” but doing “enough to sustain a friendly regime in the Kremlin,” this Carnegie Endowment expert predicts in Foreign Affairs.
5. A new nuclear arms race with Russia or China will only distract the U.S. from the technological revolution that  “will shape the battlefield of the future,” according to Rose Gottemoeller. Advances in sensing technology will enable states to target their adversaries’ nuclear missiles; this vulnerability of nuclear weapons, coupled with nuclear innovations such as drone swarms, will increasingly define war, the former U.S. Under Secretary of State writes in Foreign Affairs.
6. Europe should not turn its back on pro-Western Russians by introducing a visa ban for all Russian nationals, Carnegie Endowment’s Andrey Kolesnikov writes in Russia.Post. Implementing calls by Finland and Estonia for such a ban would amount to blaming all Russians “for the continuation of the Putin regime,” which would be wrong, in Kolesnikov’s view. In his estimate, around 30 million people in Russia oppose the war, so “why should they bear the double burden of responsibility for Putin and his deeds?” Kolesnikov asks.

 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

“A disaster is looming at a huge Ukrainian nuclear power plant,” Editorial Board, WP, 08.13.22.

• “Grave alarm about a possible nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine is escalating and warranted. Artillery shells have been raining on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. They could strike it in a way that would disperse radioactive materials and cause widespread contamination—equivalent to a dirty bomb—or interfere with its pressurized water cooling system, leading to a meltdown. The plant, occupied by Russian forces, should be immediately demilitarized and isolated from the war.”

“Why al-Zawahiri’s death should focus attention on nuclear terrorism—foreign and domestic,” Scott Roecker and Nickolas Roth of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, BAS, 08.15.22.

• “The news that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the al-Qaeda terror group, was killed in a drone strike is not just a counterterrorism victory, but also a win for those seeking to prevent catastrophic nuclear terrorism. Al-Zawahiri’s role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center is well known, but his role in supporting al-Qaeda’s elaborate attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon is less well publicized.”
• “People may think that the apocalyptic ideology and rhetoric that provided the justification for al-Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions are unique to Islamic jihadism. Those would be wrong conclusions. This type of extreme, apocalyptic thinking exists among domestic terrorists in the United States today and needs more attention. There is a growing threat of politically motivated violent extremists in the United States, and some of those domestic extremists have ambitions similar to al-Qaeda’s.”
• “As long as nuclear weapons and materials exist, governments must vigilantly defend against this threat and policymakers, like those in Congress, must provide the oversight and resources needed to adequately protect U.S. nuclear facilities.”

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

• No significant developments.

Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“A Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kherson faces steep odds. Ukraine needs to show progress on the battlefield. But its army may not be ready,” The Economist, 08.14.22.

• “The great wars of the 20th century pivoted on counter-offensives … Now Ukraine, with a fifth of its territory in Russian hands, hopes to join that list. But a much-vaunted operation in southern Kherson province seems to have been overhyped. That may be intentional.”
• “For months Ukrainian officials have hinted that an attack in the south is imminent. ... An update provided by British intelligence officials on July 28 said that ‘Ukraine’s counter-offensive in Kherson is gathering momentum.’ … Conventional wisdom holds that attacking forces need three times as many troops as there are defenders to capture a well-defended position; more in urban areas. If Ukraine ever had such an advantage, it no longer does.”
• “Though Ukraine does have a large pool of troops, most of them are conscripts with days of training. The most demanding fighting has been done by just five brigades of Ukraine’s most experienced and skilled soldiers, notes Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute … These units are exhausted and have taken heavy casualties. Training new brigades and equipping them for an offensive will take time.”
• “‘Since 1992, in our field exercises, we did not study offensive actions,’ lamented Sergiy Grabskyi, a reserve colonel in Ukraine’s army … ‘After eight years of war, Ukrainian forces are brilliant in defensive actions, but they have very limited or almost zero experience of conducting large-scale offensive actions.’ Ukrainian counter-attacks around Kharkiv in May, though successful, were small and resulted in many casualties.”
• “Encouraging the idea that a ground offensive is imminent has some advantages. It raises spirits among civilians in occupied Kherson. It keeps Russian forces—already battered by artillery—on edge. ... The risk is that hyping counter-offensives which fail to materialize will eventually harm morale. But if attacks take place and fizzle, the disillusionment would be even worse. An offensive driven by political considerations, in defiance of military realities, would be ‘a really bad idea’ says a seasoned military analyst.”

“Russia’s Repeat Failures Moscow’s New Strategy in Ukraine Is Just as Bad as the Old One,” Dara Massicot of RAND, FA, 08.15.22.

• “When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Kremlin inadvertently put its military forces in an unsustainable position, ordering them to take on more operations than they could bear. It had nearly all its soldiers surge simultaneously and rapidly into Ukraine to fight along multiple fronts.”  
• “Although Russia has had six months to learn from these mistakes, it appears poised to once again commit its depleted forces to an untenable mission: annexing and holding Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces … Holding this territory will require substantial amounts of manpower and armored equipment—particularly given that the regions have contested frontlines and that Russian forces in each experience organized partisan attacks.”  
• “Moscow’s troubles, however, don’t guarantee Ukraine’s success. Kyiv has also lost many troops and weapons. In the near term, Ukraine, like Russia, will probably struggle to carry out new large-scale offensives or counteroffensives.” 
• “Ukraine can complicate Russia’s ability to fortify and annex this vital territory [Kherson and surrounding areas] by using a method that worked in the opening phases of the war: inflicting battlefield losses so stark that Russia’s military leadership becomes convinced their forces cannot hold the oblast and that their positions are, or will imminently become, unsustainable. To do that, the Ukrainian military must maintain a contested frontline, attack Russian command-and-control systems and steadily thin out Russian forces to the point that they are combat ineffective in a particular area.” 
• “But for such a Ukrainian strategy to have the best chance of success, it must be in progress before Russia attempts to annex the territory it holds, that way Ukrainian attacks can deny Russia a foothold in an area like Kherson. … The sad reality is that annexing four regions is unlikely to be the end of Russia’s mission in Ukraine, but just one phase in Putin’s much longer project. Both Ukraine and its backers must be prepared for a protracted war.” 

“The Case for Cautious Optimism in Ukraine,” RAND’s Raphael S. Cohen and Gian Gentile, FP, 08.09.22.

• “If the next phase of the war is marked by similarly incremental change on the ground, then the question becomes which side is better able to sustain a slowly grinding war of attrition. This, in turn, hinges on three main factors: materiel, manpower and, above all, morale and the will to fight.”
  • “Of the three, the balance of weapons and ammunition is perhaps the easiest to measure. According to Oryx, a military analysis website that has painstakingly tracked visual confirmation of destroyed equipment, Russia has lost significantly more heavy equipment than Ukraine—including almost four times as many tanks and five times as many armored fighting vehicles.”
  • “While Ukrainian casualties are believed to be somewhat higher than Russia’s, both sides are estimated to be losing hundreds of soldiers a day.”
  • “Finally, there is the amorphous but all-important question of national morale and the will to fight. So far, neither side shows any sign of cracking. Ukrainian polls consistently show overwhelming support for fighting on and staunch opposition to giving up Ukrainian land in return for peace. And Ukrainians—unlike Russians—will lose their country if they lose this war.”
• “While the outcome of the war is by no means clear, the balance of materiel, manpower and willpower all seem to make the case for cautious optimism. Setbacks in the Donbas aside, the strategic balance still favors Ukraine. Although Ukraine is unlikely to throw Russia back to its borders any time soon, the war will likely trend in Ukraine’s favor in the coming months. But only if the West does not blink first.”

“Ukraine: Gladiatorial Battle,” Discussion between the PRISP Center’s Pyotr Skorobogatyi and Russian defense analyst Ruslan Pukhov, PRISP Center, 08.04.22. Clues From Russian Views

• The Russian Armed Forces do not have fifth-generation combat aircraft causing a lack of high-precision weapons and modern aiming equipment ultimately reducing effectiveness of its Su-34 bombers. Often the Russian military is forced to use unguided bombs at heights accessible to Ukrainian Armed Forces or to completely abandon operations. On the ground, while the Russian army mainly uses modernized third-generation combat tanks, they lack an active protection complex … making them incapable of resisting attacks by the Javelin, NLAW or MATADOR anti-tank systems.
• In addition, the Russian Armed Forces are short on infantry, especially when considering the size of the battlefield. The Russian military has an insufficient number of soldiers making it difficult to conduct an offensive, especially when paired with vulnerable tanks. At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been participating in active combat since 2014 and therefore have more experienced gunners, so-called “situational awareness,” as well as better target designation. Ultimately, the Ukrainian military often wins out during an artillery clash.
• Soviet weapons used by both Russia and Ukraine fire no further than 20-25 kilometers, while modern Western weapons can fire much farther at 40-41 kilometers. It must be noted, however, that the West does not yet supply such weapons in substantial enough quantities. Finally, the West has begun supplying Ukraine with HIMARS and MLRS rocket systems which can fire up to 85 kilometers. The Russian army already does not have air superiority and Western weapons may make this disparity worse.
• Meanwhile, the West continues to lack political determination to supply Ukraine with significantly large quantities of heavy weapons. Current assistance is thus for the most part limited to technical and organizational help characterized by a lower degree of involvement. Additional issues arise from the need to reactivate supplied equipment, to carry out routine maintenance, and, of course, to train Ukrainian soldiers. At the same time, the soldiers learn quickly, in a matter of several weeks, and this, coupled with the increased supply of Western weapons, may change the situation on the ground by the end of the summer to mirror a deadlock similar to the one faced by armies during the Korean War in 1951.

“Who’s who in the Ukrainian military hierarchy,” Interview with Russian defense analyst Ruslan Pukhov, MK.ru, 08.06.22. Clues From Russian Views

• According to Ruslan Pukhov, the Ukrainian Armed Forces missed an opportunity to launch a successful counteroffensive in the south due to an insufficient number of forces and equipment, mainly artillery and aviation to support their advancing troops. The Russian Armed Forces were able to prevent Ukrainian military from gathering its forces in the direction of the counterattack.
• Pukhov states that there are currently two important high-ranking commanders within the Ukrainian Armed Forces: Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Kyrylo Budanov, both are quite young at 49 and 36 years old and neither have studied at any Soviet universities. Zaluzhnyi advocates for the speedy transfer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ organization and command to a NATO structure of headquarters, as well as a complete transition to Western weapons. Pukhov suggests that Zelensky particularly places his trust in Budanov.
• In his characterization of Zelensky, Pukhov states that he is a kind of wartime president who is not particularly experienced in military affairs and lacks sufficient understanding of them, though he ably communicates with Western media and visiting delegations.

Punitive measures related to Ukraine and their impact globally:

“Does the Russia-Ukraine war lead to currency asymmetries? A US dollar tale,” The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Vol. 26, sana gaied chortane of Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Sousse and Dharen Kumar Pandey of Magadh University, November 2022.

• “The Russia-Ukraine conflict had a negative impact on the value of the global currencies; however, a region-by-region analysis shows that while European currencies (particularly the Russian ruble, Czech koruna and Polish zloty) depreciated against the USD, Pacific currencies appreciated significantly, and the currencies of the Middle East and Africa (ME&A) are insignificant.”
• “We also show that due to the financial and economic sanctions imposed on Russia, as well as Poland and the Czech Republic's proximity to the war zone, their currencies have weakened significantly against the USD. Furthermore, the Russian Central Bank's announcement to peg the ruble with gold, has had a significant positive impact on the pan-American, European (particularly the Russian ruble and the Polish zloty) and ME&A currencies.”

“The West Must Wean Itself Off Russian Titanium,” WSJ’s Jon Sindreu, WSJ, 08.05.22.

• “Recently, the European Union scrapped plans to include Russia's VSMPO-Avisma in its seventh round of sanctions responding to the invasion of Ukraine. VSMPO is the world's largest producer of titanium, which is essential for building aircraft because it is strong, resistant to corrosion and far lighter than steel. Almost half of global titanium is used in aerospace.”
• “Still, U.S. aerospace giants like Boeing, Raytheon and General Electric have either walked away from Russian titanium or minimized its use. By contrast, Airbus keeps buying it through unsanctioned subsidiaries.”
• “Airbus and other Western manufacturers have gained time to shift supply chains elsewhere. But there is also a risk that convenience prevails, as it did after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.”
• “So far, the West has focused its ‘reshoring’ efforts mainly on energy and semiconductors. Titanium is a vulnerability that shouldn't be taken lightly either.”

How to Take Down a Tyrant, Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, FP, 08.10.22.

• “Every regime collapse is obviously caused by a confluence of factors, as other experts have explored. Yet, at the same time, some patterns are readily apparent from analyzing the cases where economic implosion preceded collapse, revealing at least three crucial, transferable lessons of how economic pressure can be most effective.”
  1. “Isolate the sanctioned nation as completely as possible.”
  2. “Pair government sanctions with voluntary private sector action.”
  3. “Make government sanctions comprehensive, across sectors and between countries.”
• “Eroding Putin’s internal legitimacy is a safer path than attempting to disarm him in permanent direct battle—or ignoring his bloody imperial agenda and falling victim to the cowardly self-defeating path of appeasement.”

Ukraine-related negotiations:

“The West Needs a Strategy to Avoid Exhaustion in Ukraine,” CSIS’s Gerald F. Hyman, NI, 08.12.22.

• “If the current trajectory continues, the billions of dollars in weapons, munitions and infrastructure provided by the NATO allies to Ukraine and the even greater amount of armor, rockets, missiles and personnel available to Russia is likely to produce a long, agonizing stalemate, a war of attrition, without Moscow creating a subservient Ukraine or Ukraine ‘regaining every inch of territory.’”
• “Neither side can continue at this rate—least of all Ukraine.”
• “The NATO allies in conjunction with Zelensky need now to develop a long-term viable strategy, a plan with realistic objectives (stop the Russian advances? Roll back the Russian gains?), consequent and viable financial and military resource guarantees and an actual blueprint for the strategy’s implementation.”
• “Effecting that strategy would almost certainly require possibly protracted mediation rather than some dramatic face-to-face multilateral conference and negotiation. ... The diplomatic challenge is not finding an appropriate intermediary but rather whether the warring parties are open to genuine intermediation and whether the ‘dispute is ripe,’ to use the terminology of mediation. And that is a matter of political will in both Moscow and Kyiv.”
• “The NATO allies should begin to actively—although probably not publicly—press for just such a mediated solution, in which Moscow would recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine while Kyiv would recognize that, at least provisionally, it has lost de facto if not de jure control over parts of eastern and southern Ukraine. The geographic and political details of that ‘deal’ are precisely what any mediators would be charged with negotiating. The alternative would be a continued, protracted, exhausting war of attrition with all its attendant human costs: decimation of the troops on both sides, uncertain outcomes, degraded economies, displaced populations and heart-rending scenes of personal and family devastation in Russia too, not just in Ukraine.”

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

“Henry Kissinger Is Worried About ‘Disequilibrium’: The 99-year-old former secretary of state has just published a book on leadership and sees a dangerous lack of strategic purpose in U.S. foreign policy,” Interview by Laura Secor, WSJ, 08.12.22.

• “‘In my thinking, equilibrium has two components,’ he tells me. ‘A kind of balance of power, with an acceptance of the legitimacy of sometimes opposing values.’ … The other level, he says, is ‘equilibrium of conduct, meaning there are limitations to the exercise of your own capabilities and power in relation to what is needed for the overall equilibrium.’”
• “Americans resist separating the idea of diplomacy from that of ‘personal relationships with the adversary.’ They tend to view negotiations … in missionary rather than psychological terms, seeking to convert or condemn their interlocutors rather than to penetrate their thinking.”
• “Mr. Kissinger sees today’s world as verging on a dangerous disequilibrium. ‘We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,’ he says.”
• “On the question of Taiwan, Mr. Kissinger worries that the U.S. and China are maneuvering toward a crisis, and he counsels steadiness on Washington’s part.”
• “He sees no choice but to take Vladimir Putin’s stated security concerns seriously and believes that it was a mistake for NATO to signal to Ukraine that it might eventually join the alliance: ‘I thought that Poland—all the traditional Western countries that have been part of Western history—were logical members of NATO,’ he says. But Ukraine, in his view, is a collection of territories once appended to Russia, which Russians see as their own, even though ‘some Ukrainians’ do not. Stability would be better served by its acting as a buffer between Russia and the West … He says, however, that the die has now been cast. After the way Russia has behaved in Ukraine, ‘now I consider, one way or the other, formally or not, Ukraine has to be treated in the aftermath of this as a member of NATO.’”
  • “Still, he foresees a settlement that preserves Russia’s gains from its initial incursion in 2014, when it seized Crimea and portions of the Donbas region, though he does not have an answer to the question of how such a settlement would differ from the agreement that failed to stabilize the conflict 8 years ago.”

“War With Ukraine as Other Means to Speed Up Reversal of Russia’s ‘Civilizational Choice,’” RM’s Simon Saradzhyan, RM, 08.12.22.

• “To Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine is obviously not an end in itself. … Of these [aims], one appears to be somewhat overlooked and undeservedly so, in my view: It is to accelerate what Putin would like to be Russian elites’ clean break from a ‘morally bankrupt’ and ‘declining’ West, so that Russia can blossom as a separate civilization in alignment with the ‘great civilization’ of a ‘rising’ China.”
• “This is being sold both to Russia’s elites and to its general public as Putin’s grand vision of a once-in-a-century-or-more change of Russia’s ‘civilizational choice.’ However, I argue … that, in reality, it is an exercise in realpolitik meant to position Russia in the emerging global order in a way that its rulers believe will be most beneficial to their country’s vital interests and for them personally.”
• “Waves of NATO expansion and ‘color revolutions’ convinced Putin, rightly or wrongly, that the West’s leading powers … were in no hurry to accept Moscow as an equal in their club. Equally important, Putin concluded … that Europe and the U.S. had entered secular decline, while China would continue rising … These perceptions must have gradually made Putin question whether Russia’s geopolitical choice in favor of the West—made by Peter the Great in the 17th century1 and revived by Boris Yeltsin in 1992—remained in the country’s interest.”
• “Much of what laws could not achieve when it came to de-Europeanizing Russia’s elites, war did. Putin’s decision to launch a ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine in February triggered waves of unprecedented Western sanctions … These restrictions … essentially left Russia’s elite with little choice but to stop tying their personal future with the West … Putin has also used Russia’s conflict with Ukraine to accelerate the reorientation of ordinary Russians from West to East. Since Feb. 24, 2022, the Kremlin has left no stone unturned in its effort to find ways to convince the Russian public that their country is fighting an existential war against the collective West.”

“Washington is gung-ho for a new Cold War. But that's a bad old idea,” WP’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, WP, 08.09.22.

• “Haunting questions remain. Does a new Cold War—taking on Russia and China at once—serve the real security of Americans? Does it further President Biden's promised ‘foreign policy for the middle class?’ Might most Americans prefer that this country curb our enthusiasm for foreign adventure while focusing on getting our own house in order?”
• “The existential threat to our security now is the extreme weather caused by climate change, which is already costing lives and billions of dollars in destruction from wildfires, floods, plagues and drought. Monkeypox reminds us that the deadliest attacks have come from global pandemics. Throwing money at the Pentagon doesn't help. Wouldn't it be better if Special Presidential Envoy John F. Kerry's journeys got as much attention as Pelosi's Taiwan performance? Addressing climate change and pandemics can't be done without Chinese and Russian cooperation, yet the Chinese officially terminated talks on these issues in the wake of Pelosi's visit.”
• “Biden's foreign policy team has focused on lining up bases and allies to surround and contain Russia and China. But the Ukraine war has revealed Russia's military weakness. Meanwhile, sanctions have cut off access to Russian food, fertilizers and minerals vital to countries worldwide and might contribute to a global recession.”
• “The revived Cold Warriors assert that the U.S. deployment of forces around China and Russia is defensive. But as Stephen Walt notes in Foreign Policy, this ignores the ‘security dilemma.’”
• “Great powers decline largely because of internal weakness and the failure to adjust to new realities. In an era of dangerous partisan enmity, the reflexive bipartisan embrace of a new Cold War is a striking contrast. But the old habits don't address the new challenges. This is hardly the way to build a vibrant American democracy.”

“The U.S. Is Afraid of Losing in Ukraine—or Winning, WSJ’s Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, 08.12.22.

• “Mr. Putin can’t lose to Ukraine, he has to lose to NATO.”
• “Thanks to his expensively failed war, he also knows he has less and less with which to counter a Western intervention except the threat of nuclear armageddon, which isn’t what the billionaire sybarites who undergird his regime signed up for. This is most obvious in his laborious seven-veils dance over whether to annex Ukrainian territory and bring it under Russia’s nuclear umbrella. Mr. Putin dithers because if he makes the declaration and the U.S. and Ukraine decline to be impressed, he could face a personally disastrous dilemma between climbing down and using a nuke.”
• “Settled is whether Ukraine is an independent country: Mr. Putin now knows it won’t become an annexed satrapy of Russia.”
• “There’s an obvious solution for Russia: Accept Ukraine’s existence and grow prosperous and secure together. But this solution would require the departure of Mr. Putin.”

“NATO Is Hedging on Its Promise to Protect the Baltics; The alliance is still making only token increases to its military presence in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia,” John R. Deni of U.S. Army War College and Brookings’ Michael O'Hanlon, WSJ, 08.10.22.

• “The misperception of Russia as a contained threat is ... difficult to correct. If NATO is looking to the future, as it should, it must presuppose the likelihood of at least a partial recovery of the Russian army. Even if Russia is a state in decline, its military power won't fade overnight. NATO need not match Russia soldier for soldier along hypothetical Baltic battle lines, and it shouldn't seek an arms race. But its combined forces in the east shouldn't be outnumbered by more than roughly 3 to 1 at any time, and it should have the main building blocks of its combat power in place and ready for when the bullets start flying.”
• “NATO should use the months between now and its 2023 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, to establish combat power in the three Baltic states sufficient to hold off a Russian offensive until reinforcements can be assembled. In addition to whatever force structure Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania can provide, this means one enduring allied brigade in each country, with appropriate amounts of supporting air power. As the alliance's military and strategic backbone, the U.S. should for the first time establish a permanent troop presence in the Baltic region. A brigade of aggregate combat power would complement what the U.S. already has stationed in Poland. Europe doesn't need a big military buildup. But NATO's commitment should be forward-deployed, combat-capable and resolute.”

“Russia Can’t Fight a War and Still Arm the World. How the Country’s Shrinking Weapons Exports Could Change the Middle East,” Jennifer Kavanagh and Frederic Wehrey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, FA, 08.12.22.

• “The longer the war continues, the more challenging the situation will be for Russia’s defense industrial base, which is being targeted by unprecedented Western sanctions and export controls. Although their full impact may not be evident now, these strains are likely to have long-term implications for Russia’s ability to project power abroad, especially in the Middle East.”
• “Moscow’s growing need for cash may encourage it to adopt ever more irresponsible defense export policies even as its overall share of arms sales in the region shrinks. To manage these risks, the Biden administration should not rush to fill any real or anticipated gap left by declining Russian arms sales, even if other countries stand to gain a greater share of the market.”
• “As it seeks to draw down its military presence in the Middle East, Washington will need to get more comfortable with multipolarity and begin to see itself as one player among many.” 
• “Any U.S. arms transfers should be part of a holistic approach that places greater priority on political reforms and economic development within recipient countries.”

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“China’s New Vassal: How the War in Ukraine Turned Moscow Into Beijing’s Junior Partner,” Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, FA 08.09.22.

• “[China-Russia] asymmetry is destined to become only more pronounced in the coming years as Putin’s regime depends on Beijing for its survival. China will likely gobble up more of Russia’s overall trade. It will become an essential market for Russian exports (notably natural resources) while Russian consumers will increasingly rely on Chinese goods. And it will take advantage of Russia’s predicament to assert the renminbi as both a dominant regional and major international currency.”
• “To keep China happy, Russian leaders will have little choice but to accept unfavorable terms in commercial negotiations, to support Chinese positions in international forums such as the United Nations and even to curtail Moscow’s relations with other countries ... The Kremlin’s dependence on China will turn Russia into a useful instrument in a larger game for Zhongnanhai, a tremendous asset in Beijing’s competition with Washington.”
• “Before the unprovoked Russian attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, Chinese diplomats and intelligence officers had tried to make sense of the large buildup of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine and to assess U.S. warnings that a war was in the offing. Beijing was decidedly skeptical of the alarms that Washington sounded, assuming, like many European governments, that the costs of the invasion for Russia would far outweigh any potential benefits.”
• “The schism with the West will not be repaired as long as Putin is in the Kremlin and probably even beyond his rule. Russia is turning into a giant Eurasian Iran: fairly isolated, with a smaller and more technologically backward economy thanks to its hostilities to the West but still too big and too important to be considered irrelevant.”
• “Given its growing leverage, Beijing will be able to extract from Moscow something that was unthinkable a year ago: access to the most sophisticated Russian weapons and their designs, preferential access to the Russian Arctic, the accommodation of Chinese security interests in Central Asia and Russia’s support … for China’s positions in all regional and global issues, most notably in territorial disputes between China and its neighbors. … In effect, the Kremlin will have protected itself from Western pressure at the expense of losing a very high degree of its strategic autonomy.” 

“Beijing and Moscow clash over Kazakhstan’s oil,” Joe Webster and Paddy Ryan of the Atlantic Council, Eurasianet, 08.11.22.

• “Since its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has twice blocked Kazakh oil exports crossing its territory. Is this revenge for Kazakhstan’s refusal to endorse the war? An attempt to push up the value of its own crude?”
• “Either way, Beijing does not like it. The Chinese government has signaled that it will not accept Russian meddling in Kazakh oil exports, quietly rebuking Moscow for the blockades.”
• “Although little Kazakh crude is physically shipped to China, China has an interest in seeing it reach global markets; without these shipments, oil prices would rise, global consumer demand for goods would weaken and China’s export-oriented growth would take a hit.”
• “Though Beijing is loath to publicly break with Moscow, the PRC has subtly warned Moscow about intruding too deeply in world oil markets.”
  • “Three days after the CPC pipeline was first closed, Sinopec halted a major investment in Russia.”
  • “That same day, Bloomberg reported that Chinese companies and government officials were ‘rushing’ to learn how to comply with Western sanctions on Russia, while the Chinese Foreign Ministry reportedly warned state-owned energy firms to avoid any ‘hasty’ purchases that could present secondary sanctions risk.”
• “China and the West should see that they have a shared interest in preserving Kazakh oil flows should Russia block exports again.”

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

“The Case Against a New Arms Race: Nuclear Weapons Are Not the Future,” Rose Gottemoeller of Stanford University, FA, 08.09.22.

• “It would be a mistake for the United States, or any state, to embark on a nuclear arms race during this time, when a revolution is afoot in other types of military technology. New defense innovations promise not just to transform warfare but also to undermine the logic and utility of nuclear weapons. With advances in sensing technology, states may soon be able to track and target their adversaries’ nuclear missiles, making the weapons easier to eliminate. And with nuclear weapons more vulnerable, innovations such as drone swarms—large numbers of small automated weapons that collectively execute a coordinated attack—will increasingly define war. A fixation on building more nuclear weapons will only distract from this technological revolution, making it harder for the United States to master the advances that will shape the battlefield of the future.”
• “This future threat argues not for abandoning nuclear weapons but for carrying forward a careful modernization of them … United States must watch China. China has gone from a nuclear posture depending on a small force of missiles intended for second-strike retaliation to something else.”
• “Washington must remain alert, as well, to what Russia is doing. The country is a highly capable and experienced military nuclear power with a leader whose belligerence is breathtaking. Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling is unlike anything seen in the seven decades since nuclear weapons were last used … As long as both parties [the U.S. and Russia] adhere to the treaty, which they have continued to do even during the Ukraine war, the United States will be able to carry out its nuclear modernization in a stable and predictable environment. This predictability is the key reason to replace the treaty before it ends in February 2026.”
• “The wisest choice for Washington, then, is to modernize its nuclear force posture as planned while putting its main emphasis on developing and acquiring new technologies for military applications. A nuclear arms race is a sidetrack that is not in the U.S. national security interest.”

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security:

• No significant developments.

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:

“Russia’s Brutal Honesty Has Destroyed the West’s Appeasers,” Meduza’s Alexey Kovalev, FP, 08.12.22.

• “Six months into this brutal war, there are still plenty of Western intellectuals, politicians, journalists and activists willfully ignoring what Russia itself is telling them again and again, loud and clear. As a Russian journalist now in exile, I find this willful ignorance of my country deeply disturbing.”
• “The evidence of Russia’s actual goals and war crimes in Ukraine has become ever more overwhelming. … A considerable part of this evidence comes from Russia’s own propaganda sources, including TASS news agency photographers in occupied areas where foreigners and Russian independent media are not allowed.”
• “A host of Russian state media outlets have been meticulously documenting their military’s atrocities, with the footage presented to Russians and the world as an achievement and underlined with an incessant stream of genocidal rhetoric. One has to be actively and systematically avoiding reality to claim that the invasion is anything other than a horrific crime bordering on genocide—and all of it committed by choice.”
• “Scholars can debate the exact definitions of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, but one thing is clear from the most immediate goal of its forces in the area they occupy: The aim is to erase not just Ukraine’s sovereignty as a state (including by annexing the occupied areas) but its very nationhood.”

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Pro-Western Russians are Europeans. Europe shouldn’t turn its back on them,” Andrey Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Russia.Post, 08.12.22.

• “In recent days, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to ban all Russian travelers, many European leaders, including the prime ministers of Finland and Estonia, Sanna Marin and Kaja Kallas, raised banning visas for Russian citizens.”
• “What is happening again raises the question of whether Russians bear collective responsibility and collective guilt for the continuation of the Putin regime and consequently the terrible war in Ukraine.”
• “The problem is that the victims of the Putin regime—like the victims of the Stalin regime—are also (yet, not only) the people of Russia itself. ... The notion that all Russians support the regime is false. According to the Levada Center, only about half of respondents unequivocally support the so-called special military operation.”
• “Given that there are some 110 million adults in Russia, around 30 million people more or less openly oppose the war (and there looks to be upside to this number). Why should they bear the double burden of responsibility for Putin and his deeds?”

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:

“Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s risky double game,” Editorial Board, FT, 08.10.22.

• “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine opened an opportunity for Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to play statesman and powerbroker. The Turkish president deserves credit for brokering a deal with Kyiv and Moscow that has allowed grain shipments to resume from Ukrainian ports. But he has been careful to safeguard important economic ties with Moscow. After his cozy-seeming four-hour meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin last Friday, western capitals worry Erdoğan is deepening links with Moscow.”
• “Exactly what Erdoğan and Putin agreed in Sochi remains unclear. A joint statement talked of increasing trade and energy ties and deeper collaboration in sectors including transport, industry, finance and construction. A Russian deputy prime minister said Turkey would begin paying for gas partially in rubles. Turkey’s president was later quoted as saying five Turkish banks would adopt Russia’s Mir payments system.”
• “Erdoğan has good reason to woo Russian financial inflows as he tries to win re-election next year amid an escalating debt and currency crisis, caused largely by his own economic mismanagement.”
• “Despite Turkey’s NATO membership, it has no legal obligation to impose U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia ... Any deepening of economic ties with Moscow, however, is likely to inflame frictions with the West when Turkey is already dragging its feet over Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership.”
• “One senior official has suggested Western countries might call on companies and banks to pull out of Turkey if Erdoğan follows through with the intentions he signaled on Friday. But Turkey is simply too important geopolitically and for Western businesses. Europe frets over Ankara’s ability to flood the continent with the 3.7 million refugees from Syria and elsewhere that Turkey is hosting.”

“Germany’s Ukraine Problem: Europe’s Largest Country Needs Time to Adjust to a Dangerous New World,” Wolfgang Ischinger of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council, FA, 08.10.22.

• “Although Germany stands to benefit from a rapid end to the war, it will not benefit if such a resolution happens by Russian diktat. Germany must therefore do everything it can to support Ukraine in its effort to reclaim areas in the south and east of the country. Berlin, along with other European allies, must be prepared to provide much more heavy weaponry to Kyiv to help bring about the necessary conditions for ceasefire or peace negotiations.”
• “In addition to keeping the German public behind him, the German leader must keep the European Union together. ... Two steps in this regard need to be taken now.”
  • “First, the EU must be more capable of military action when NATO is unable or unwilling to act.”
  • “Second, the decision-making process of the EU must change ... Until the EU eliminates the cost-free veto, it will never be taken seriously as a major actor on global security.”

“It’s Time for Olaf Scholz to Walk His Talk,” Lukas Paul Schmelter of the Harvard Kennedy School and Bastian Matteo Scianna of the University of Potsdam, FP, 08.09.22.

• “The aim for Germany, not least from a position of national interest, must be to strengthen Ukrainian resistance to ensure that it can maintain a position from which to plausibly bargain with Russia. This, in turn, requires Berlin to regain trust with its EU and NATO partners and lead the effort to bolster NATO’s eastern flank.”

“Germany is now the fulcrum for Vladimir Putin’s pressure,” FT’s Constanze Stelzenmüller, FT, 08.10.22.

• “[Putin’s] message to Berlin is simple: turn on Nord Stream 2, or your economy gets it.”
• “Conceding to the Kremlin by pushing Ukraine towards an armistice and putting Nord Stream 2 into operation would be political suicide. Putin is waging war not just against Ukraine, but against the West. And Germany is the fulcrum where he must apply maximum force to break up Europe and the alliance.”

“Rosatom: Putin’s Nuclear Arm in the Middle East,” Amr Salah of George Mason University, NI, 08.14.22.

• “Three months after launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin met with Alexei Likhachev, the director general of Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation. In that meeting, Putin, who was interested in the corporation’s foreign revenues, asked Likhachev: ‘Has the number of foreign orders grown?’ Likhachev responded, Yes, they continue to grow every year.”
• “Rosatom corporation is an important source of revenue for Moscow. It is one of the world’s leading suppliers of nuclear reactors. In addition, it is responsible for the Russian nuclear power industry, nuclear weapons division, nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet, and nuclear research institutions. More importantly, it represents Putin’s ability to establish and maintain the nuclear capabilities of multiple countries worldwide. It manages more than 300 companies and organizations involved in all stages of the nuclear weapon and power production chain. According to its annual report for 2020, the corporation’s ten-year portfolio of overseas orders reached $138.3 billion. Atomic power plant constructions abroad constituted $89.1 billion.”
• “The corporation is entirely under the control of the Russian president, who sets its strategic objectives and appoints its director and the members of its supervisory board. In addition to conventional arms supplies, mercenaries, and a military base in the region, Putin actively uses Rosatom to expand Russian influence in the Middle East. Rosatom plays a key role in approaching and establishing closer ties with regional powers.”
• “Russia is committed to further cooperation with the Arab states. Development needs, entangled with political dynamics in a volatile region, do not exclude an additional role for Rosatom in future nuclear projects in the Middle East. For those who seek to recalibrate their relationships with the United States, Putin’s nuclear arm remains an attractive option.”

“Russia’s diplomats are now reduced to propagandists,” Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, FT, 08.09.22.

• “Many international observers have been surprised by the hardening of the language used by Russian diplomats. But since the beginning of this war, and even before, Russian diplomacy has focused on one mission: to show that the Russian leader alone sees the world as it really is and is acting in the best way possible. Statements by Russian diplomats are increasingly targeted not at external audiences, but at the domestic one.”
• “This new language of Russian diplomacy may be primarily addressed to the domestic audience but it also helps to gather a pool of sympathizers around the world—particularly among anti-Western regimes and politicians in developing countries, as well as internal critics of Western countries themselves.”
• “Just like the Russian economy, Russian diplomacy is trying to replace its ties with the West by switching to the domestic market and looking for audiences in other parts of the world—and with all the problems and shocks that such a switch entails.”

Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.