“U.S.-Russian Relations Were at a 25-Year Low”

IP Global Edition interviews the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Dmitri Trenin

Trenin: Russia is so severely affected by the crisis because its recent "fat years" were fueled by energy exports and people clearly saw a change when prices plummeted from $150 a barrel to just $40 or $50 a barrel. Also, there had been a lot of easy borrowing and cheap money; many Russian companies—private and state-owned—borrowed excessively from foreign countries. They had been warned about the dangers of this, but ignored the warnings, and the result was a severe debt and credit crunch. Perhaps the most critical upshot of the economic crisis is that it sent a strong message to Russia that it is a part of the global economy. Putin and Medvedev are right in claiming that its origin is outside of Russia. Yet the crisis hit a country with grave economic flaws and vulnerabilities, and it has exacerbated these problems.

IP: You say the crisis "came from abroad." Has this triggered anti-Americanism?

Trenin: Actually, the crisis stopped a very dangerous deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations, which were at a 25 year low. ...

This article was originally published in IP-Global Edition.