Russia Archive

Now that the tide in the Syrian civil war appears to have definitely turned in favor of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, one of the key factors that will shape Syria’s future is the precise nature and durability of the relationship between the two countries that saved Assad from collapse: Iran and Russia. Tehran and Moscow worked together to bolster Assad, but the character of their ad hoc alliance has always remained a bit of a mystery. They each, for their own purposes, wanted the regime in Damascus to survive. Beyond that, it has never been clear just how committed Russian […]

At first glance, the U.S. Treasury Department’s April 6 sanctions against 38 Russian individuals and business entities, including oligarchs and senior government officials, would be easy enough to dismiss as the latest reprisal in an escalating geopolitical spat between the United States and Russia. Just a week before, the two countries traded diplomatic expulsions over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom. Sixty diplomats from each nation were declared persona non grata. The U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg and the Russian consulate in Seattle were both shuttered. The tit-for-tat expulsions followed a February indictment by the […]