Carnegie Moscow Center
By hosting the seventh summit of the BRICS group, Vladimir Putin will demonstrate to the Russian people and the world that his country is anything but isolated.
Russia’s purpose in arranging the meeting between representatives of the Assad regime and its opponents is to promote the idea that Syrian reconciliation can be achieved through dialogue between all non-extremist Syrian groups and without involvement from outside.
The year 2014 ended the period of cooperation between Russia and the West. A new period has begun, marked by rivalry and competition. At the same time, Russia has been seeking ways to strengthen ties with leading non-Western powers.
To escape the analogy of a revolution, Vladimir Putin must rise above the rapacious elite, and to avoid being overthrown, he must replace it.
A book by the younger authors from the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine, takes stock of the changes wrought in the Russian military organization and also analyzes the operation of the Russian forces in the current crisis in Ukraine.
Throughout the year, Eurasia Outlook has been trying to bring to your attention a variety of views from across the vast region on the region itself. At the beginning of 2015, we are taking a customary holiday break. We will be back on January 12.
For the Russian economic and political system, as well as for the country’s foreign relations, the current economic crisis is an existential one. Russia will exit from it in a very different form from what it is today.
For over two decades, no one in the West felt the need for regulating Russia’s relations with NATO. The lesson of the Napoleonic wars about the need to integrate a former adversary—which was forgotten after WWI—has been forgotten again.
As one of his final acts in 2014, President Putin signed on December 26 the country’s new military doctrine. The new doctrine makes it clear that even if the West is not officially an adversary, it is a powerful competitor and a bitter rival, a source of most of military risks and threats.
Many in Russia believe that the EU sanctions appeared as a result of the Ukrainian conflict and pressure from Washington. In fact, the reasons for the current deterioration in Russia’s relations with Europe are far more profound. But this does not mean that another—European—front in Russia’s confrontation with the West has now been opened.