China pioneered a selective repression method decades ago. Since then it has actively shared its experience. The Russian regime seems to be actively borrowing from the Chinese.
Turkey and Russia have a deeply “compartmentalized” relationship. A disagreement on one regional issue—Ukraine, Georgia or even Syria—will not necessarily derail their bilateral relations.
Western leaders’ recent attempts to assure a diplomatic resolution of the Ukraine crisis may come to no avail. Is it possible to restore the peaceful, European status quo amidst such rapidly growing East-West animosity? Eurasia Outlook asked Carnegie’s experts to share their thoughts.
When Russian diplomats talk about Ukraine, they are actually speaking to just one man—Vladimir Putin. Moscow does not see any value in reaching out to the broad policy community in the West. The scary thing is that this behavior is not a consequence of the Ukrainian crisis, but one of its major sources.
Some experts’ concern that the amended version of the Russian military doctrine would significantly alter conditions for nuclear weapons’ use in the context of the Ukraine crisis and the resulting sharp escalation of the military and political situation has turned out to be premature.
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic in the North Caucasus, is now firmly entrenched in Russian politics at the federal-level, and it appears that he is there to stay, because Putin and Kadyrov really need each other.
The current political crisis in Russia’s relations with the West gives a strong impetus to Russian rapprochement with Asian countries. However, many analysts are of the opinion that no significant progress in this area has been achieved as of yet.
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.
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.
