Carnegie Moscow Center
While Russian military reform, aimed at creating a modern military institution, has proven relatively successful, the Putin leadership’s strategic thinking remains outdated.
Inter-religious and interethnic relations are rapidly deteriorating in Russia, but the authorities lack the programs to cope with them, the mechanisms to create new programs, and the realization that both are urgently needed.
Russians need to see themselves as a Euro-Pacific country, and act accordingly by developing Russia's own Asia-Pacific territory and increasing its activity in the whole region.
Politicization and internal disengagement have increased tension within both Russian Orthodoxy and Islam in Russia, and secular and religious authorities are consciously facilitating these societal divisions in an effort to strengthen their positions.
Putin's regime has transformed Russian authoritarianism into a brand of personalized power that has the potential to shift toward a dictatorship.
Ukraine is the most important test of the Kremlin’s neo-imperialistic longings and also a test of the West’s interest in expanding its normative principles eastward—however, Ukraine itself should demonstrate a desire for deeper integration based on a democratic path.
The Kremlin's proposed anti-corruption campaign will serve to bind the bureaucracy together in order to avoid disloyalty, with the main goal of redistributing the wealth of the elites among their members.
The Kremlin is implementing counterproductive changes in relations between Moscow and the regions that offer little promise of improving the situation in the country.
Even as the Kremlin moves from soft authoritarianism to a much harsher form, a new Russia is emerging, one presented by civil society and its drive for dignity and freedom.
The current three filter system for gubernatorial elections not only aggravates the opposition and fails to vent mounting social pressure, but it also strengthens the position of incumbent governors.