Putin has thoroughly insulated himself from the sorts of forces rattling Yanukovych in Ukraine these days. But as he watches events unfold, he has to feel a little insecure.

Whatever happens in Ukraine, if Putin thinks he has won, Russia will have lost.

Fedor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs, remarked in a presentation to London’s Centre for European Reform on October 8 that Ukraine is a state, not a nation. This is a fairly typical Russian observation, often intended to suggest that Ukraine is not quite legitimate as a separate entity. It is also a […]

The dispute over Edward Snowden—if anyone still remembers him—gave us the chance to slough off the mindset constraining Western policy towards Russia. How Western nations proceed over Syria will show how far that chance is developed. The US “reset” was a reset to factory mode, not a fresh beginning, and the factory was built to […]

Tom Graham’s wide-ranging “Response to the Critics” included a question for me, in his fourth paragraph. He saw an inconsistency between, on the one hand, my view that Putin’s crackdown over the first year of his latest Presidency has been internally generated and was not a response to U.S. pressure, and, on the other hand, […]

Editors’ note: What follows is the third part of an exchange on Russian-Western relations that began with David Kramer and Lilia Shevtsova’s February 21 essay, “Here We Go Again: Falling for the Russia Trap.” On March 12, Thomas Graham responded with his essay, “In Defense of a Strategic Approach to Russia.” Further contributions to this […]