Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1 to 10 of about 550
The recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics is a chance for Russia to climb down from the peak of escalation with a concrete result, because retreating empty-handed would have been a ruinous outcome for the Kremlin’s prestige.
What do Russia’s divergent approaches—mediation versus militarization—say about the prospects of stability in Eurasia at such turbulent times?
The geopolitical retreat that Russia began three decades ago has ended, and a new policy of selective expansion based on Russia’s national interests has commenced.
Putin could have gotten out of this trap, had the Russian side positively evaluated the limited Western concessions that are on the table: arms control of medium-range weapons systems, as well as confidence-building, transparency, and verification measures in the NATO-Russia borderlands, and measures of crisis communication.
A new spiral of international escalation would rapidly accelerate and entrench the repressive trends that have been in ascendancy in Russian public life in recent years. Any dissatisfaction will be crushed with redoubled strength, including when it emerges within the in-system opposition.
In its negotiations with the West, Russia is behaving not like a country preparing to wage war, but like a country that, if necessary, can afford to do so.
Following Moscow’s demands for security guarantees from the United States and NATO, Carnegie Moscow Center director Dmitri Trenin was interviewed by Kommersant’s Elena Chernenko about Russia’s future steps with regard to Ukraine and the West.
If Moscow believes that the main security threat it faces is NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia’s western borders, it would make sense to focus on the infrastructure itself rather than the theoretical possibility of NATO expansion.
Moscow’s demands of the United States and NATO are in fact the strategic goals of Russian policy in Europe. If Russia cannot achieve them by diplomatic means, it will resort to other methods.
If Russia succeeds in propping up the regime in Kazakhstan and making it more pro-Russian, then the Central Asian nation could, like Belarus, become a more reliable ally and partner for Russia.