Carnegie Moscow Center
The war in Ukraine has given Russia a pretext for the military and patriotic consolidation and militarist survival paradigm.
By turning Russia into a war state, President Putin has unleashed a process he cannot stop and made himself hostage to suicidal statecraft.
Vladimir Putin’s increasingly reckless interventions in Ukraine should force the West to reevaluate everything it thought it knew about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the past two decades of Western policy on Russia.
Allowing Kiev to restore the country’s territorial integrity is the best way to bring real peace to Ukraine. At the same time, pressuring Kiev to declare a new ceasefire that will give the rebels another break will only prolong the conflict.
Russian state and national identity are still based on the search for the enemy. However, the patriotic euphoria that followed Crimea has begun to wear off. As the Kremlin attempts to understand what to do next in Ukraine, it has become clear that Russians are not prepared to pay for it with their lives.
Does liberal democracy depend on the existence of ideological and civilizational rivals to spur it into cycles of reinvention and renewal?
On June 12, Russia is celebrating its national day, but the date continues to confuse Russians. It is on this day that Russia tries to celebrate its sovereignty without raising the uncomfortable question: sovereignty from whom?
Barack Obama’s recent remarks at West Point show that he doesn’t understand the rules of the game he’s playing with Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
The elections in Ukraine demonstrate that Ukrainians have decisively chosen to turn toward Europe.
The worse the situation becomes in Russia, the better it looks in the eye of the people. This can be explained by mass self-deception and people’s desire to believe in a fairy tale. However, Russia is approaching a moment of truth when people will realize how serious the country’s problems are.