Summer reading list
Hello! Our usual weekly newsletter is taking a short vacation until next week. But fear not: to ensure you don’t miss out, we’ve put together a summer reading list of some of the most interesting recent articles about the Russian economy, the situation on the frontline and Moscow’s relationship with one of its closest friends on the world stage. Our editors also recommend two books you might want to tuck into about Russia’s history.
Articles and reports
The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) has published a detailed analytical report on Russian-Iranian relations. Ties between Moscow and Tehran have greatly strengthened after the invasion of Ukraine and are now stretching beyond simple categorization as a business relationship or military partnership, the report’s authors conclude.
Dara Massicot, senior fellow at the Carnegie Berlin Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies discussed how Russia’s labor shortage and its poor demographic situation are impacting the military and changing its approach to recruiting new soldiers.
In an article for Foreign Policy, Sweden’s former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote about how Ukraine’s counter-invasion into Russia’s western Kursk region has already become a turning point in the conflict.
Russia’s central bank published a detailed English-language report into how it dealt with recent economic crises, starting with the 2008-2009 global recession. In particular, it discusses the lessons that the regulator learned from the 2022 crisis (sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent imposition of Western sanctions). It explained the importance of introducing capital controls and of limiting the financial sector’s exposure to foreign infrastructure. It said taking such steps enabled it to mitigate the fallout of sanctions on the Russian economy.
Former U.S. Secretary of State and director of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University Condoleezza Rice wrote of the dangers of isolationism and how Vladimir Putin is reviving a new Russian empire.
Books
In To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power historian and Johns Hopkins University professor Sergei Radchenko analyzes the psychology and decisions of the Soviet leadership as they spent decades trying to spread their influence around the world.
In Goodbye to Russia: A Personal Reckoning from the Ruins of War, BBC journalist Sarah Rainsford, who spent years reporting from Russia in multiple stints over two decades before she was expelled from the country, gives a first-person account of the country’s modern history — from the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s to the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
