Re: Russia
Expertise, Analysis & Policy Network LMA Foundation| re-russia.net
By calling Russia a 'paper tiger', Donald Trump has drawn a line under the era dominated by the concept of a 'war of attrition', which until now had remained the main framework for understanding the Russia–Ukraine conflict and its potential outcomes. This framework assumed that, in the long run, Russia possessed a significant advantage in resources that would eventually lead to Ukraine’s defeat, despite its heroic resistance. However, two years of Russian offensives have so far failed to ...| Re: Russia
According to the 'information' theory of war, any attempt to end a conflict is obstructed by uncertainty over each side’s understanding of the other’s capabilities. No less significant an obstacle is the uncertainty surrounding the terms and guarantees of a future peace. One of the key problems today is that neither Europe, which is calling for guarantees of peace for Ukraine once hostilities have ended, nor the United States, which passively agrees on their necessity, is able to formulat...| Re: Russia
The EU has suddenly postponed the publication of its 19th package of sanctions against Russia, which had been scheduled for 17 September. The reason for this was an ultimatum unexpectedly issued by Donald Trump to his European partners. Trump has now made the introduction of tough sanctions against Russia, which he has been speaking about for the past two months, conditional on NATO countries completely abandoning the purchase of Russian oil and imposing tariffs of 50–100% on countries that...| Re: Russia
Eight months of chaotic and fruitless efforts by Donald Trump to end the war in Ukraine, capped by his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, put an end to the myth of Trump's special relationship with Putin, and to the myth of the American president's ability to strike pragmatic deals with the most ruthless dictators and strongmen. It is not Trump's transactional mastery, but Putin's intransigence, his refusal to respond to courtship and his lack of fear in the face of threats, that remai...| Re: Russia
Economists are divided on whether the Russian economy has entered a technical recession. The answer to this question depends on the methods of seasonal adjustment applied. Simpler approaches suggest that, in the second quarter, the economy showed meagre growth of 0.2%. This means recession could only be declared if the economy were to contract in both the third and fourth quarters, i.e. not before February 2026. Meanwhile, following a spike in May, industrial output declined in June and July....| Re: Russia
Surveys in 2025 record a significant shift in public opinion among Ukrainians. According to the latest measurements, 69% of those surveyed in Ukraine support the swift end of the war with Russia through negotiations, whereas only 24% favour continuing military action until victory, understood as the liberation of occupied territories. At first glance, this seems a complete reversal of the mood in 2022, when 73% supported fighting until full victory. Yet the situation is not entirely comparabl...| Re: Russia
Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has carried out at least 96 successful drone strikes on Russian infrastructure. A quarter of these occurred in January 2025, after which the intensity of attacks sharply declined; however, from early July to 7 September, there were 43 successful strikes. The sharp increase in their intensity and effectiveness makes it possible to speak of a specific 'infrastructure' offensive by Ukraine, or the emergence of an 'infrastructure' front in the Russia–Ukr...| Re: Russia
Some time ago, a group of Russian experts prepared a detailed report on the changes that have taken place in Russian school education since the start of the war. A telling sign of the times is that the experts based in Russia chose to remain anonymous. Meanwhile, this is a comprehensive study, drawing on a panel of in-depth interviews, teacher surveys, automated analysis of social media posts, open statistics and educational institution reports, as well as changes in federal legislation and i...| Re: Russia
How does Trump’s chaotic peacemaking affect public attitudes in Russia and the West regarding the Russia–Ukraine conflict and the prospects for its resolution? In Russia, the Alaska summit triggered a genuine upheaval in public opinion: the share of those expressing a positive attitude towards America jumped from 17% to 48%, while those expressing a negative view dropped from 71% to 30%. However, such swings, both upwards and downwards, are nothing new: over the past 12 years they have oc...| Re: Russia
On 27 August, the transition period expired, after which an additional tariff on Indian goods imported into the United States, introduced by Donald Trump as a sanction for purchasing Russian oil, came into effect. The Indian authorities have been making provocative statements directed at Washington and declaring that they do not intend to refuse Russian supplies. However, there is no real economic logic behind this standoff: India’s losses from reduced exports to the United States would be ...| Re: Russia
In May 2025, a large bas-relief depicting Stalin was unveiled at the Taganskaya metro station in Moscow. In the same month, monuments to Stalin appeared in the Bashkir village of Amirovo and the Vologda settlement of Kaduy. In July, the commander of the Baltic Fleet presented a bust of the 'leader of the peoples' to the Kaliningrad Officers’ House, while a school in the town of Nikolsk, Vologda Region, placed a statue of Stalin at its entrance. The new memorialisation of the 'leader of the ...| Re: Russia
In August, activity among analytical and expert centres traditionally slows down, and Re:Russia likewise takes a customary pause until the beginning of September. We will interrupt this break should something extraordinary occur. And August is indeed a month when such events are entirely possible. The next two months will be critically important for the military outcomes of this year and will, to a large extent, determine the positioning of negotiations to end the conflict, which we expect to...| Re: Russia
The share of the rouble in foreign trade settlements has exceeded 50% in both exports and imports, according to data from the Central Bank. This marks the second phase of the transformation of Russian foreign trade under sanctions. In the first phase, up until early 2024, 'friendly' currencies, primarily the yuan, displaced the 'unfriendly' ones, i.e. reserve currencies. However, payment disruptions and the threat of secondary sanctions forced banks and companies to look for alternative solut...| Re: Russia
Public opinion surveys in Russia, conducted in the summer of 2025 by the Russian Field project and the Levada Centre, record a gradual demobilisation of public sentiment regarding the war, a further shrinking of the group of its consistent supporters, and a low belief in the ability of the Russian army to bring the conflict to an end through decisive military success. One of the key characteristics of Russian public opinion, as reflected in mass surveys, is the presence of a fairly large grou...| Re: Russia
The main beneficiary of the United States’ reputational losses on the global stage is China. Over the past year, perceptions of the US around the world have deteriorated sharply, while China’s reputation has, on the contrary, improved. The median level of favourable attitudes towards China has risen from 31% in 2023 to 36%, whereas positive perceptions of the US over the same period have fallen from 59% to 49%, according to a large-scale survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. This s...| Re: Russia
The downing of an Azerbaijani aircraft has become the cause of heightened tensions between Moscow and Baku. Baku’s unwillingness to let the incident slide and its 'unfriendly' steps, such as the closure of the 'Russian House,' provoked new forceful measures by the Kremlin against Azerbaijan: cyberattacks, threats against the Azerbaijani diaspora, and then the orchestrated beatings and killings of Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg. The loud, but essentially superficial, conflict has turned out t...| Re: Russia
In 2025, Russian combined missile and drone attacks reached a fundamentally new level, creating insoluble challenges for Ukraine’s air defence system. The scale of Russian strikes has increased manifold, the geography of launches continues to expand, and the means of attack have evolved. Consequently, the effectiveness of Ukraine’s air defence system has begun to decline noticeably. The severity of this problem is compounded by the growing imbalance between the cost of combined missile-an...| Re: Russia
Trump's much-anticipated ‘very tough statements’ towards Moscow left many disappointed. Most notably, Trump effectively postponed until September the introduction of new sanctions targeting Russian oil exports. In this sense, the American president’s remarks appear to be a continuation of the tactic he has employed for the past six months, repeatedly deferring a policy of pressure on Moscow under various pretexts, despite persistent calls from Kyiv and European capitals to take a harder...| Re: Russia
A combination of sustained increases in spending on the war in Ukraine, an economic slowdown and falling export revenues is pushing Russian economic authorities to reconsider their approach to economic policy. To patch up the widening budget gap, they will most likely need to ease monetary policy and accept higher inflation as a consequence. Meanwhile, the recently revised federal budget for 2025 is already beginning to unravel. The deficit over the first half of the year has nearly exhausted...| Re: Russia
Protests in the Altai Republic against the municipal reform became yet another vivid episode of resistance from Russian regions to the Kremlin's centralising efforts aimed at dismantling local self-government. The ongoing reform eliminates the two-tier system of local self-government, abolishing rural councils and strengthening the control of governors over consolidated districts. The Altai case has its own peculiarities: protests by residents and local elites are directed against the outside...| Re: Russia
An effective commercial 'contract for war' remains a key factor enabling Vladimir Putin to carry out offensive campaigns in Ukraine for a second consecutive year, despite extremely high losses and limited tangible gains in terms of captured territory. The replenishment of manpower has been made possible by the rapid increase in signing bonuses. This growth was especially sharp in the second half of last year. The total value of such bonuses, including both federal and regional payments, peake...| Re: Russia
In the second half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, the Kremlin turned its attention back to regional policy after a pause taken during 2022–2023. The pace and nature of personnel rotations suggest that new approaches may prove even harsher than before. This is evidenced by near blanket 'purges' of the administrative elite in several regions where governors were replaced. In a recently published article on Re:Russia, entitled ‘Regional elites in the era of the ‘Special Military Opera...| Re: Russia
The Russian authorities have established a complex ecosystem of information and cyber influence, uniting propaganda media, non-governmental organisations, intelligence agencies (FSB, SVR, GRU), as well as hacker and criminal cyber groups. Researchers have identified 51 organisations within this system, although the actual number is likely higher. This ecosystem enables coordinated cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns aimed at achieving strategic objectives. The effectiveness of this syst...| Re: Russia
Russian industry is slowing down across the board, as confirmed by both official statistics and business surveys, although a number of current indicators appear contradictory. A surge of pessimism about economic dynamics in May–June was evident not only at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum but also in enterprise surveys. While the overall economic indicator of current business climate assessments in the latest Central Bank survey shows an unpleasant but moderate deterioration, assessments w...| Re: Russia
The global oil market appears to have entered a new ‘bear’ era. This was demonstrated, in particular, by the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Despite enormous geopolitical risks and the threat of the Strait of Hormuz being blocked, the market's reaction was restrained and short-lived. Oil prices are under pressure from fundamental factors. Supply growth is outpacing demand, while OPEC+, against this backdrop, is ‘relaxing’ voluntary production cuts, thereby further increasing the m...| Re: Russia
The full-scale war with Ukraine was entirely unnecessary for either Russian business or the Russian bureaucracy. It became possible due to a shift in the balance of power within the Russian elite that had already occurred in 2012–2014. However, over the next ten years, this shift did not lead to fundamental changes in the hybrid political-economic model that had taken shape in Russia during the 2000s. Former Vice-Rector of the Higher School of Economics and Director of the Institute for Ind...| Re: Russia
Following the resolution of the Iran crisis, Donald Trump's rhetoric towards Russia has gradually begun to harden. The Kremlin responded swiftly to this shift: at the beginning of the week, President Vladimir Putin’s aide on foreign affairs did not rule out the possibility of a meeting between the two presidents, despite the lack of fundamental agreement on the parameters of a settlement in Ukraine. Until recently, the Kremlin had dismissed the idea of such a meeting. Earlier this spring, t...| Re: Russia
Since the end of 2024, Russia has officially permitted the use of cryptocurrencies in foreign trade as part of the framework of an experimental legal regime governed by the Central Bank. However, businesses had already been actively using them earlier when other settlement methods were unavailable. Before the war, the Central Bank was staunchly opposed to this, but by autumn 2022, it was forced to soften its stance. Legalising the use of cryptocurrencies to bypass sanctions is a logical move....| Re: Russia
Global military expenditure has been rising for the tenth consecutive year and increased by nearly 10% over the past year, with the overwhelming majority of this growth attributable to the traditional military powers: the United States, China, Russia, and European nations, according to a new annual report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The share of military spending in global GDP is still far from Cold War levels. However, the national military strategies pub...| Re: Russia
The law on the national messenger marks yet another step in the Russian authorities’ efforts to centralise the digital environment and transform it into a tool of authoritarian user control. The Russian authorities are unsettled by the technological and political success of China's WeChat, which has become an indispensable part of both digital everyday life and digital totalitarianism. However, creating a successful super app is an extremely complex project. WeChat emerged during the era of...| Re: Russia
One of the main objectives of the organisers of the NATO summit in The Hague was to prevent any disruptive moves by Donald Trump that might expose the deep divisions within the alliance. Mark Rutte has all but succeeded in brokering an agreement on the increase in defence spending demanded by Trump to 5%. However, this target is only expected to be reached by 2035, and some countries have already backed away from the commitment. However, even if European leaders were to seriously embark on a ...| Re: Russia
On Trump’s cap, the abbreviation MAGA – Make America Great Again – ought to be replaced with MADA – Make America Decline Again. Trump’s slogan has turned into its complete opposite. The first months of his time in the White House marked a sharp turn towards the 'decline of America' in the eyes of the surrounding world. The proportion of people who trust the United States and believe that America will play a positive role in the world in this decade is falling rapidly. Trust in Ameri...| Re: Russia
By sharply increasing aid to Ukraine at the start of 2025, Europe has managed to compensate for the lack of new support from the United States – at least in financial terms. Between January and April, total assistance amounted to €27.4 billion, only slightly below the average for all four-month periods since May 2022 (€28.3 billion). Europe accounted for 98% of this sum, whereas over the previous three years, its share stood at 53%. For Ukraine’s position to become more stable, all Eu...| Re: Russia
The Russian authorities are ramping up their anti-abortion campaign using a model of 'repressive federalism': the initiative to restrict access to abortions has been delegated to the regional level, with a quarter of regions already having adopted the relevant legislation. This tactic, previously tested in the prohibition of 'LGBT propaganda' and restrictions on labour migration, allows the authorities to present the measures as 'grassroots initiatives' while deflecting social discontent. The...| Re: Russia
At first glance, the Iran-Israel conflict offers the Kremlin considerable benefits. Oil prices have risen, some weaponry originally intended for Ukraine has been diverted to the Middle East, and Russia’s missile strikes on residential areas in Kyiv have been pushed out of the headlines by news from Tehran and Tel Aviv. However, the Kremlin’s greatest prize so far has been the conversation between Putin and Trump, during which the Russian president offered to mediate in the de-escalation o...| Re: Russia
The clear failure of Donald Trump’s peace initiatives and the looming inevitability of a new Russian offensive this summer have not had a demoralising effect on Ukrainian society, according to recent polls conducted in Ukraine. From late 2024 to March 2025, the proportion of Ukrainians expressing readiness to endure the war 'for as long as it takes' had declined, from 72% to 54%. However, a poll conducted in late May to early June records a reversal of this trend: the share of those prepare...| Re: Russia
The repressive practices used to tighten control over the scientific and academic community in Putin's Russia are, in part, ideologically inherited from the Soviet era. This includes the belief that international contacts between scholars pose a threat to the regime, as they contribute both to the spread of subversive ideas and the leakage of technology. However, unlike the late Soviet practices of control, which relied on an administrative hierarchy and ‘party leadership’ of academia, th...| Re: Russia
In 2023–2024, Ukraine’s economy performed reasonably well, thanks to substantial Western aid, a partial recovery in exports, and the effect of 'military Keynesianism.' The macroeconomic trajectory resembled that of Russia – growth following a shock. However, by the end of 2024, structural constraints began to emerge, and inflation intensified. In 2024, GDP grew by 2.9%, but a decline was recorded in the final quarter. In 2025, the economy is still growing, but the pace is slowing. The m...| Re: Russia
In April, the Russian army significantly increased the pace of its offensive, and in May, it doubled the successes of the previous month, capturing almost 500 square kilometres, marking the largest advance by the Russian Armed Forces since November last year. The pace of Russian troop advances this year is generally twice as fast as in the first five months of 2024. However, this is clearly insufficient for a significant breakthrough: as a result of last year's offensive, the Russian army o...| Re: Russia
For the first time in two and a half years, the Central Bank lowered its key interest rate on 6 June. However, this move is largely symbolic and does not indicate that the Russian economy is firmly on the path of disinflation. On the one hand, cutting the rate by one percentage point, from 21% to 20%, will not have a significant impact on lending to the economy. A more meaningful cut would have brought it down to at least 19%. On the other hand, this step serves as a compromise, signalling th...| Re: Russia
Wage dynamics and domestic consumption will be among the key topics discussed at tomorrow’s meeting of the Central Bank’s Board of Directors regarding the refinancing rate. Following a wage boom in 2024, wage growth has slowed sharply in early 2025. In real terms, wages rose by 3.4% in the first quarter compared to the same period in 2024, whereas a year earlier the increase was 11%. Signs of economic cooling began to appear towards the end of 2024, and the slowdown in nominal wage growth...| Re: Russia
A critical imbalance in manpower and equipment in its confrontation with Russia has effectively forced Ukraine down the path of innovation and, as a result, it has become a global leader in the development and deployment of drones, reshaping the nature of modern warfare. FPV drones are rapidly becoming the Kalashnikovs of the 21st century – a universal weapon without which war is now inconceivable. A new branch of the armed forces has emerged within Ukraine’s military, and Ukrainian naval...| Re: Russia
The negotiations in Istanbul are unfolding according to Moscow’s script, which dictates that discussion of the Kremlin’s demands must precede any ceasefire. This is the result of yet another concession by Trump, who has deviated from the previously agreed position with Ukraine and Europe, which had called for the reverse sequence. The second round of talks differed little from the first. However, this time both sides presented their irreconcilable positions in the form of memoranda. The U...| Re: Russia
The closure of the Gulag History Museum just two weeks after Russia's 30 October Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repressions marks a symbolic and expected step in the ongoing revision of attitudes toward the repressions of the communist regime. This shift has been accelerating in recent years, particularly following the outbreak of war. In the 2010s, the Kremlin devoted considerable attention to the topic of repression, adopting a Concept for the Perpetuation of Their Memory and s...| re-russia.net
