Russia occupies an unusual position on the world stage. Under President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated that it has the capacity to destabilize the international order. While Russia lacks the military strength to challenge U.S. supremacy, no one—particularly not the NATO alliance—is ignoring its capabilities. Moscow’s use of arms sales and military engagements to build ties to countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and especially the Middle East has also attracted attention. And its massive exports of fossil fuels to Europe offers Russia additional leverage. But for all its ability to upend power dynamics in places like Libya and Ukraine, Moscow has so far not demonstrated the capacity to fill the vacuums it creates.
Even as Moscow maintains an outsized influence on the global stage, discontent is brewing at home. Putin has dominated the Russian political scene for more than two decades, but his popularity is waning amid a slowing economy and following a deeply unpopular pension reform effort. That didn’t stop him from engineering a way to hold onto power after his current presidential term ends in 2024, despite a constitutional term limit. But it has opened space for Putin’s long-suffering political opponents to call attention to the corruption and violence that have marked his tenure. The most prominent among them, Alexei Navalny, almost paid for his life for doing so, and is now paying with his freedom.
With its sanctions on Russia for having annexed Crimea in 2014, the United States added to Putin’s problems. During Donald Trump’s presidency, American officials, including members of Congress and in the intelligence community, saw Russia as an enemy that meddled in U.S. elections and continued to work against American national security interests around the world. For reasons that are difficult to determine, however, Trump himself proved resistant to measures that could deter future Russian meddling, even as his efforts to undermine NATO and other international blocs played into Putin’s hands. Now bilateral relations have entered another period of uncertainty in the early months of President Joe Biden’s administration, which announced sanctions in response to Russia’s cyber behavior, but also renewed the New START bilateral nuclear arms control treaty. Biden’s decision to hold a summit with Putin in June was seen as a further signal of his willingness to work constructively with Russia, particularly on issues like cyber crime, but so far the jury is out on whether Putin sees any benefits in doing so.
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