We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
U.S. army instructor from the Joint Multinational Training Group trains Ukrainian service members to operate with M141 Bunker Defeat Munition (SMAW-D) grenade launcher, supplied by the United States.
What We’re Watching: US troops in Eastern Europe, Peru government reshuffle, Denmark lifts COVID restrictions
US deploys troops to Eastern Europe. A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of “ignoring” Kremlin demands to limit NATO further expansion to the East, the White House sent more than 3,000 troops to alliance members Germany, Poland, and Romania. This was in addition to an order for 8,500 US troops to be ready to deploy to Eastern Europe on short notice. With Russia continuing to mass more than 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, Moscow and Washington have been at loggerheads in diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis, raising fears of war. Russia wants guarantees that NATO will not expand further East into what the Kremlin sees as its sphere of influence. But the West refuses to accept that demand, offering instead to commit only to limits on weapons deployments in Eastern Europe. It’s worth noting that none of the 3,000 US troops are being sent to Ukraine — neither NATO nor the US have an appetite for sending troops there. But Putin, it seems, just might …
Is it time to ease COVID restrictions? Denmark has become the first EU country to lift all pandemic-related restrictions, noting that COVID-19 can no longer be considered a “socially critical sickness.” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said masks and “green passes” will no longer be required in public places, but she noted that this could change if new variants emerge. This development comes as Denmark is recording one of the highest per capita COVID caseloads in the world, though hospitalizations and deaths remain low because most of the population – just over 80%, according to Our World in Data – is vaccinated. Other EU countries are making similar moves: France is lifting some restrictions, though indoor mask requirements and vaccine mandates remain, and the changes come despite still-high cases and deaths. Finland is on a similar trajectory. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has warned countries not to prematurely “declare victory” over the virus, saying that COVID “continues to evolve.”
Peruvian president reshuffles Cabinet … again. Pedro Castillo has switched up his cabinet for the third time in six months, replacing half of its 18 members, including the finance minister and prime minister. The move came after Peru’s interior minister resigned late last week, accusing the president of thwarting efforts to tackle corruption. The folksy Castillo — a former rural schoolteacher who campaigned on horseback with a gigantic pencil — rode to an election win last year on promises of tackling corruption. But he has struggled to form a working relationship with non-leftist parties, and his ministers keep getting caught up in scandals. A recent crime wave in the capital, Lima, and last month’s disastrous oil spill at the country’s largest refinery haven’t helped. The latest reshuffle raises questions about whether Castillo can see out his term. The Peruvian presidency is a famously fickle post — in 2019, a carousel of impeachments and resignations saw the country with three different presidents in a single month. Can Castillo stay in the saddle until the next election?What We’re Watching: Russian and NATO intentions, US strikes Syrian prison, UAE-Houthi escalation
Russian and NATO intentions.To prepare to meet a perceived military threat, planners try to understand both the intentions and the capabilities of the other side. Russia says it does not intend to invade Ukraine, but NATO planners can see it has built the capability for an attack by amassing 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border. In response, the alliance has decided to underline its own capacities. On Monday, NATO announced it had put troops on high alert and ordered the reinforcement of Eastern Europe with additional ships and fighter jets. It has beefed up defense of the Baltic states and is publicly mulling the idea of deploying more troops to southeastern Europe. NATO commanders hope this shift in the alliance’s own capabilities will send Moscow a clear message: Any aggressive military action taken by Russia will come at a steep cost for Moscow. The UK government claims to have exposed a Russian plot to install a pro-Kremlin leader in power in Kyiv in hopes of forcing Russia to abort any such plan. The perceived Russian threat has also reinvigorated debate within Sweden and Finland about possible membership in NATO for those countries. In sum, both sides have boosted their capabilities, and bystanders are considering doing the same. It’s Russian and NATO intentions that Ukraine, and the rest of us, will be watching.
ISIS tries a jailbreak. The Pentagon has launched a series of air raids on a prison in northeast Syria that was recently attacked by Islamic State fighters who hoped to free comrades imprisoned there. The raids marked a rare intervention by the US military, which has focused its operations in the area mainly on advising and training the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces, which was largely responsible for the Islamic State’s territorial defeat in 2019. The US bombing came four days after ISIS fighters stormed the prison where about 12,000 of their comrades and family members have been held since the last ISIS stronghold fell. At least 120 people have been killed since clashes broke out on Thursday. Though ISIS no longer holds much territory in Iraq or Syria, Islamic State sleeper cells have launched attacks in recent years and remain active in some areas. The US, meanwhile, has 900 troops stationed in northeast Syria to support Kurdish-affiliated militant groups, though they rarely engage directly with ISIS fighters.
More missiles rain on the UAE. For the second time in a week, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have fired rockets from Yemen toward Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital. The missiles are part of a deadly recent escalation in Yemen’s eight-year civil war. In a rare move, the Houthis recently launched a drone attack on oil tankers at the Abu Dhabi port, killing at least three people. The UAE’s government, which supports a Saudi-led coalition against the rebels, responded to the first Houthi attack with a series of attacks on Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, that killed at least 70 people. The UAE has tried to reduce its involvement in this conflict in recent years, but it now finds itself ensnared in an intensifying confrontation with the rebels. Yemen’s war is partly a proxy battle between regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia, and this latest expansion of hostilities comes just as the two rivals were exploring an unprecedented detente. We’re watching to see whether this ongoing escalation will derail their progress.Is Putin still Soviet? Wrong question
Thirty years ago this week, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, forced to choose between dissolving the USSR or trying to hold it together by force, decided to lower the flag and end 75 years of Communist rule. Boris Yeltsin became president of something called the Russian Federation, and the Cold War officially passed into history. Many on both sides of the old divide hoped for a clean break from a confrontational past and looked forward to a new, cooperative future.
Three decades later, how much has changed? There is no question that Russians enjoy a higher standard of living, opportunity, and freedom than during the Soviet period. They can travel. They can read the news from a world away at a moment’s notice. They can enjoy Michelin-starred farm-to-table restaurants and swanky art exhibitions in a smart new Moscow that bears little resemblance to the drab Soviet capital of the last century.
And yet, President Vladimir Putin is now railing at NATO and threatening military action against Ukraine to protect Russia’s sphere of influence. Putin’s most prominent opponent languishes in prison, a year after being poisoned, likely by state officials. And this week, the state shuttered a homegrown human rights group dedicated to cataloging the Soviet regime’s human-rights abuses.
So is Vladimir Putin – a former KGB agent who once called the Soviet collapse the “greatest geopolitical tragedy” of the century – trying to reconstitute a new vision of the old hammers and sickles?
That question misses a longer historical sweep that Putin is part of.
Russia has, since the 18th century, led an empire. It’s a sprawling land empire that is hard to keep together and hard to defend – the Russian winter has repeatedly stepped in to help where mountain ranges or waterways could not – but an empire nonetheless.
For two hundred years, being a great power through imperial clout has been central to Russian leaders’ understanding of what Russia is: from the czars to the Soviets and now to… what? The “phantom pain of a lost empire,” as the syndrome has been called, is a powerful thing.
The thing is, Russia today is smaller than it’s been in 200 years. It lacks the allies that the Soviets had – after all, it’s now Ukraine, not West Germany, that’s living in the shadow of Kremlin threats. It lacks the global ideological appeal that the USSR enjoyed. And, of course, it lacks Ukraine. That’s a problem for imperial Russia because – as Putin tells it, and many Russians agree – Ukraine is a critical and inseparable part of the broader Russian world. Without Ukraine, Russia is, as Putin sees it, just another country.
So when Putin squabbles with the West about where NATO’s borders should end – and the countries squashed dangerously between Russia and Germany can fairly ask why he should get to decide that for them – he is acting on that imperial impulse.
When he claims to be encircled by a NATO that is present across just a tiny fraction of Russia’s immensely long borders, he is expressing the same geopolitical insecurity that kept empresses and czars, commissars and general secretaries awake in the Kremlin for centuries.
The question is whether that vision is sustainable for a Russia that is arguably weaker, globally, than it’s ever been. A Russia of modern people but without a modern innovative economy. Is empire (re)building worth the cost for a Russia that might otherwise be a great country without being a great power? Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the answer to that question seems as distant as ever.
- After Kazakhstan, how will Russia escalate in Ukraine? - GZERO Media ›
- Signs of Russian climbdown following Macron-Putin meeting - GZERO Media ›
- Ukraine is fighting for all of us, says Estonia's former president Kersti Kaljulaid - GZERO Media ›
- Global Stage ›
- Russia-Ukraine war: How we got here - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Examining Putin: his logic, mistakes, and hope for Ukraine - GZERO Media ›
- Putin has "mummified" Russia: Ivan Krastev On the Putin Effect - GZERO Media ›
- Putin past the point of no return - GZERO Media ›
- Mikhail Gorbachev outlived his legacy - GZERO Media ›
- Putin cornered - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: David Petraeus on Putin's war games - GZERO Media ›
- "Peace" under authoritarian occupation isn't peaceful: Estonia's Kaja Kallas - GZERO Media ›
- Russia vs. NATO: Heightened risk of war - GZERO Media ›