The park is set to be developed with Abu Dhabi-based Miral on Yas Island. It will be Disney’s seventh global resort, its first new resort in over fifteen years, and its most technologically advanced. Positioned within a four-hour flight of one-third of the world’s population, including markets in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the park represents more than a commercial expansion—this is no simple tale of castles, rides, and performances.

As Disney CEO Robert A. Iger noted, the park will be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati”.

Disneyland Abu Dhabi is best understood as a strategic milestone in the United Arab Emirates’ soft power playbook: a carefully choreographed effort to rebrand the country’s global image and elevate its influence through culture, education, and international partnerships, rather than through coercive means. The UAE seeks to downplay its reputation as “Little Sparta,” known for throwing its weight around in the region in places like Yemen, where the UAE’s military role is blamed for heightening divisions in that country and prolonging the civil war. It also signals deepening ties with the United States, projecting trust amid shifting regional alliances.

Soft power by design

The concept of “soft power”, coined by political scientist Joseph Nye, refers to a nation’s ability to influence others through attraction rather than coercion. It’s about shaping preferences by “winning hearts and minds”. In the twenty-first century, culture, branding, and narrative have become as critical to international influence as military assets or economic might.

The UAE was one of the first Gulf countries to recognize this shift and institutionalize it. In 2017, it launched a national Soft Power Strategy aimed at enhancing the country’s reputation and extending its influence overseas. The strategy outlined a comprehensive approach, leveraging economic success, cultural heritage, humanitarian aid, and a commitment to tolerance to construct an appealing and recognizable national brand.

“Our goal is to engrain the UAE’s position in the world, and in people’s hearts”, explained H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed at the strategy’s unveiling.

Few initiatives embody this strategy as vividly as Disneyland Abu Dhabi.

The UAE’s leadership sees cultural infrastructure not merely as a tourism booster but as a pillar of national soft power. Hosting a Disney park sends a clear message: The UAE is safe, modern, and family-friendly, trusted enough to house one of the world’s most iconic entertainment institutions.

This blending of Disney magic with local Emirati culture speaks to the UAE’s strategic intent to localize Western symbols of culture while showcasing its own heritage. The location is no accident either: Yas Island is already home to big-name theme parks: Warner Bros. World, Ferrari World, and SeaWorld Abu Dhabi.

Beyond oil: A new national brand

Behind the soft power lies a very concrete strategic imperative: economic diversification. Like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the UAE faces a future in which oil revenues alone can no longer sustain national growth. However, it has moved earlier and more decisively in its effort to transition from a hydrocarbon economy to one based on knowledge and services.

Expanding the leisure and tourism sectors is central to that vision. These sectors attract foreign income, create jobs, and strengthen non-oil sectors. The UAE has identified tourism and the creative economy as key pillars for a sustainable future, and Disneyland ticks all those boxes.

These projects also have a domestic dimension as instruments of legitimacy. For the Emirati leadership, ventures like Disneyland help reinforce a social contract at home: the ruling family delivers ever-greater prosperity, pride, and global recognition, and in return, the public acquiesces to their unelected governance.

In that sense, Disneyland is not just an economic asset, but a tool of statecraft.

Building a cultural hub: From Louvre to Disneyland

Over the past decade, the UAE has transformed a once-empty stretch of sand into a “branded entertainment Mecca”. Disneyland Abu Dhabi is the latest addition to a growing portfolio of landmarks that position the country as a global hub for arts, dialogue, and innovation.

The 2017 opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first Louvre outside France, marked a milestone in cultural diplomacy, made possible by Emirati funding and a landmark agreement with Paris. Nearby, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, set to be the largest of its kind, is under construction, further anchoring Saadiyat Island’s status as a beacon of global art tourism.

The UAE has also positioned itself as a crossroads of religious and cultural dialogue. In 2019, during the country’s “Year of Tolerance”, Abu Dhabi hosted Pope Francis for a historic mass. In 2023, it inaugurated the Abrahamic Family House, a single complex housing a mosque, church, and synagogue. Dubai’s Expo 2020, which drew over twenty-four million visits and brought together 192 countries under the theme “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future”, further reinforced the UAE’s brand as a meeting point of civilizations and ideas.

These projects also carry implicit diplomatic weight. Hosting globally recognized institutions strengthens bilateral relationships and signals strategic alignment. The French government’s support for the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the US presence through NYU Abu Dhabi endorses the Emirati vision and its capacity to serve as a trusted cultural and knowledge partner.

US-Emirati relations: trust and verify

The arrival of Disneyland in Abu Dhabi carries symbolic weight for US-UAE relations. For decades, the UAE has been one of Washington’s closest regional partners, hosting US troops and welcoming major US investments.

Yet the relationship has faced moments of strain. In 2021, former US President Joe Biden’s administration paused a $23 billion arms deal, including F-35 fighter jets, citing concerns about the UAE’s role in Yemen and its growing ties with China, particularly through Huawei’s 5G technology. In response, Emirati officials questioned US reliability and reportedly explored Chinese defense alternatives.

Still, both countries have taken steps to reaffirm trust. In September 2024, Biden designated the UAE a “Major Defense Partner”, a title previously granted only to India. The move signaled renewed strategic alignment and paved the way for closer cooperation on advanced technology and security.

In this context, Disney’s expansion into the Emirates carries significance beyond business. A flagship American brand is staking its future on the UAE as a stable and profitable partner. This is a soft power gesture that strengthens cultural ties and introduces a new generation of visitors to an American-inflected vision of the Gulf. Ultimately, it underscores that enduring alliances are built not only on shared interests but also on shared experiences.

A contest of charisma

Abu Dhabi’s Disney deal doesn’t occur in a vacuum; it’s part of a wider regional race for soft power among the Gulf’s wealthiest monarchies: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Just as Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project positions the Kingdom as a futuristic Disneyland, Abu Dhabi anchors the UAE’s claim to cultural openness and tourism supremacy.

Qatar has long leveraged its global media platforms, most notably Al Jazeera, alongside its major investments in sports diplomacy, including the landmark 2022 FIFA World Cup, to project a narrative of innovation to global audiences. Saudi Arabia, under the banner of “Vision 2030”, is undergoing a rapid soft power transformation of its own, emphasizing heritage tourism, mega-projects like NEOM and Qiddiya, and the hosting of international cultural and sporting events to reshape its image and diversify its economy.

What sets the UAE apart is the early institutionalization and coherence of its soft power strategy. Qatar’s media strategy often amplifies contentious political narratives and maintains affiliations with radical movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and Saudi Arabia’s reforms are very much ventures in progress. The UAE, on the other hand, has adopted a non-confrontational, globally inclusive narrative. Its soft power posturing is framed around these non-confrontational values: tolerance, intercultural dialogue, and sustainability, making its image more relatable and exportable to international audiences. Crucially, the UAE aims not only to attract attention but to project long-term reliability, a prized trait in an increasingly volatile region.

The results are telling: according to the 2025 Brand Finance index, the UAE ranks 10th globally in soft power, well ahead of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and even surpassing several global powers such as Russia and South Korea. More than mere rivalry, this signals a broader Gulf rebranding trend—one in which soft power is no longer a luxury but a strategic necessity for geopolitical resilience in the post-oil era.

Risks and realities

Of course, not everything is enchanted.

Theme parks in the Gulf have historically underperformed financially, and Disneyland’s presence won’t erase expected concerns over labor conditions in the UAE, particularly with regard to migrant workers, who make up 88 percent of the country’s population. Critics may accuse Disney of whitewashing this reality, echoing similar debates about its operations in China.

But soft power doesn’t require perfection; it requires attraction, and few countries have embraced this insight as effectively as the UAE.

Whether this strategy will yield enduring geopolitical “happily ever afters” remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: in a region often defined by hard power rivalries, Abu Dhabi has chosen to compete through visibility, credibility, and imagination.

And who better than Mickey Mouse to help carry that message?

Amit Yarom is an incoming graduate student at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is a foreign policy expert and researcher, specializing in the Arabian Gulf.

The post Mickey goes to the Gulf: The UAE’s wish upon a soft power star appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 9, Muhammad Tahir, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former RFE/RL Central and South Asia liaison in Washington, DC, was published in MSNBC on the future of RFE/RL, Voice of America, and funding for international media.

Fellow

Muhammad Tahir

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Eurasia Center

Central Asia Media

The post Tahir in MSNBC on RFE/RL, VOA funding appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 5, Muhammad Tahir, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former RFE/RL Central and South Asia liaison in Washington, DC, was quoted in Kyiv Post on the flood of Russian disinformation in Ukraine.

Fellow

Muhammad Tahir

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Eurasia Center

Central Asia Media

The post Tahir quoted by Kyiv Post on Russian disinformation in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In early April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that two Chinese nationals had been captured while fighting alongside the Russian military in eastern Ukraine. Although the presence of foreign fighters within the ranks of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invading army is not new, officials in Kyiv claim that more than 150 Chinese mercenaries have been recruited by Russia. China has called the allegations “totally unfounded.”

While there is no evidence linking Russia’s Chinese troops to Beijing, many have suggested the Chinese authorities must be aware that their nationals are participating in a foreign war. Some have pointed to widespread Russian military recruitment adverts circulating across China’s heavily censored social media space, and have suggested that the presence of these videos indicates a degree of tacit official approval, at the very least.

US officials do not believe the recently captured fighters have direct ties to the Chinese government, Reuters reports. However, there are mounting concerns in Washington and other Western capitals over reports that Beijing is sending army officers to observe the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a bid to learn tactical lessons from the war. This could provide the Chinese military with important insights into drone warfare and the rapidly changing nature of the modern battlefield.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

In a further indication of growing frustration in Kyiv over China’s alleged support for Russia’s invasion, Zelenskyy recently accused Chinese citizens of working at a Russian manufacturing plant producing drones for the war in Ukraine. In the past month, the Ukrainian authorities have also imposed sanctions on three Chinese companies for alleged involvement in the production of Iskander ballistic missiles, which Russia often uses in the war against Ukraine.

The most serious Ukrainian allegations came in the middle of April, when Zelenskyy claimed that China was now supplying weapons and gunpowder to Russia. This was the first time the Ukrainian leader had openly accused Beijing of providing Moscow with direct military assistance. Although, last fall US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell had also suggested that China was providing Russia with technology that was “not dual-use capabilities,” contributing directly to Russia’s war production.

Claims of expanding Chinese involvement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine do not come as a complete surprise. After all, China has long been seen as one of the Kremlin’s key allies and has emerged over the past decade as Moscow’s most important economic partner.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership. Over the past three years, the two countries have repeatedly underlined their shared geopolitical vision, which includes a commitment to ending the era of US dominance and ushering in a new multipolar world order. These strengthening ties have been further highlighted by a number of bilateral summit meetings between the Russian and Chinese leaders.

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Despite its close relations with Moscow, China has officially adopted a neutral stance toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This has included refraining from any overt gestures of support and publicly backing calls for peace. Nevertheless, Beijing has faced accusations of enabling the Russian war effort in important ways through the provision of restricted items including sanctioned components and dual-use technologies used in the production of missiles, tanks, and aircraft. By providing the vast majority of these exports to Russia, US officials believe that China has helped Russia greatly boost its arsenal and ramp up military production.

US officials have also alleged that China is providing Russia with geospatial intelligence to aid the invasion of Ukraine.

Claims of growing Chinese involvement are fueling speculation that this could lead to a possible international escalation in Russia’s war against Ukraine. There is also alarm over what Russia may be providing in exchange for Chinese support. US officials have alleged that China is receiving unprecedented access to highly sophisticated Russian defense technologies. The US Congress has also suggested that the Kremlin could be providing China with critical knowledge about the vulnerabilities of Western weapons systems based on combat experience acquired in Ukraine.

While Beijing has denied providing any material support for Moscow’s war, there is no question that the geopolitical partnership between China and Russia has reached new levels against the backdrop of the conflict.

With the United States now looking to reduce its involvement in European security, opportunities may soon emerge for China to play a greater role in peace efforts to end the war. However, Beijing would first need to align its actions with its words to convince Kyiv that it is a plausible peacemaker rather than a Russian ally.

Katherine Spencer is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on April 30, 2025, to clarify that reports of Chinese support for Russia’s war effort have been persistent before Kyiv’s recent accusations.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Mar 25, 2025

Ukraine’s growing military strength is an underrated factor in peace talks

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Any discussion on the future course of the war against Russia and the terms of any peace deal must take into account the fact that Ukraine is a now major military power in its own right, writes Serhii Kuzan.

Conflict Defense Industry

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Putin is ruthlessly erasing Ukrainian identity in Russian-occupied Ukraine

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By Mykola Bielieskov

A pragmatic and sustainable peace is possible in Ukraine if Kyiv’s European partners dramatically increase their own defense spending while significantly strengthening the Ukrainian military, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

European Union NATO

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Kyiv accuses China of deepening involvement in Russia’s Ukraine war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Since January 2025, the United States has quietly suspended 90 percent of its development funding for Ukraine, including the grants that kept most of the country’s independent newsrooms alive. Whether channeled directly through USAID or via partners, that funding has disappeared. The move to cut financial support comes as Moscow is intensifying its disinformation efforts.

In Mykolaiv, a strategic port city in Ukraine’s south, NikVesti is on the brink. With 4.5 million visits in 2024, it has been a cornerstone of independent local wartime reporting. Now, after losing a fifth of its budget through the loss of US funding, the newsroom is running on fumes. “We’re burning through our final reserves,” co-founder Oleh Dereniuha commented. “If funding doesn’t return, it will be difficult to make it past April.”

Further south in Kherson, Vgoru, one of only three independent outlets still operating in the region, has lost 80% of its US funding. Freelancers are gone and investigative projects have been shelved. “No one else is reporting from here,” said editor Ilona Korotitsyna. “Without us, they’ll only hear Russia.”

In Sumy, a northeastern Ukrainian city facing relentless Russian bombardment from across the nearby border, independent outlet Cykr is barely hanging on. “Sixty percent of our budget came from USAID,” said editor Dmytro Tyschenko. The site has enough funding to last a month. “After that,” he warned, “we’re bracing for a flood of unchecked Russian propaganda to fill the vacuum.”

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, the US has delivered more than $37 billion in development aid to Ukraine. With the domestic Ukrainian media market in a state of wartime collapse, the vast majority of outlets have survived almost entirely on international grants, most of them from the US.

Outlets like NikVesti, Vgoru, and Cykr are among the 90 percent of independent Ukrainian media that relied on this funding to report the facts under extraordinary conditions of bombardment, blackouts, and occupation. Beyond exposing Russian disinformation, journalists working for these outlets have investigated corruption, documented Russian strikes and their aftermath, and held the Ukrainian authorities to account, often at considerable personal risk.

There are now mounting concerns that Russia will seek to exploit emerging gaps in Ukraine’s information space created by US funding cuts. With far fewer credible sources able to report on local news stories across Ukraine, Kremlin disinformation will become much harder to counter.

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A recent disinformation operation in the Sumy region offered a glimpse of the kinds of tactics Moscow is likely to employ. In early April, Russian-linked Telegram channels began promoting fake messaging attributed to the Sumy City Council’s Health Department claiming that a mysterious disease had broken out among Ukrainian soldiers. They warned civilians to avoid contact with troops returning from the front.

This is a typical Russian disinformation operation, with fake news wrapped in official-looking packaging and seeded online in order to sow panic. The goal isn’t just to mislead, however. Russia also aims to undermine faith in the information space altogether. And with credible independent Ukrainian media outlets unable to operate, that task becomes significantly easier.

Allowing Ukraine’s independent media to fall silent in the middle of a war would have serious strategic consequences. Without independent journalism, Ukraine not only loses its first line of defense against Russian disinformation. It also loses the transparency and accountability that are vital for the future of the country’s democracy.

The Ukrainian outlets and journalists hit by recent US funding cuts are not just waiting for a bailout. They are launching membership programs, pitching donors, trimming operations, and testing new formats. Some are turning to diaspora networks. Others are banking on European funding. So far, these efforts are proving slow and insufficient.

“We’re doing everything we can. In a region where the local business market is nonexistent, we’re reaching out to European partners, applying for every grant we can find,” said Vgoru’s Korotitsyna. “But EU funding is slow, and the competition is fierce. We need support now, not six months down the line, or we won’t be around to receive it.”

Muhammad Tahir is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He has reported extensively across the CIS, South Asia, and the Middle East.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Mar 25, 2025

Ukraine’s growing military strength is an underrated factor in peace talks

By Serhii Kuzan

Any discussion on the future course of the war against Russia and the terms of any peace deal must take into account the fact that Ukraine is a now major military power in its own right, writes Serhii Kuzan.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Mar 20, 2025

Putin is ruthlessly erasing Ukrainian identity in Russian-occupied Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin is pursuing policies in Russian-occupied Ukraine that almost certainly meet the definition of ethnic cleansing and may qualify as genocide, writes Peter Dickinson.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Apr 10, 2025

A pragmatic peace plan for Ukraine

By Mykola Bielieskov

A pragmatic and sustainable peace is possible in Ukraine if Kyiv’s European partners dramatically increase their own defense spending while significantly strengthening the Ukrainian military, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

European Union NATO

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post US funding cuts create openings for Russian disinformation in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On April 14, Muhammad Tahir, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former RFE/RL Central and South Asia liaison in Washington, DC, was published in Newsweek on the effect of US aid cuts on Ukrainian media and Russian disinformation.

Fellow

Muhammad Tahir

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Eurasia Center

Central Asia Media

The post Tahir in Newsweek on the effect of US aid cuts on Ukrainian media appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 24, Muhammad Tahir, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former RFE/RL Central and South Asia liaison in Washington, DC, was published in MSNBC on the termination of the US Agency for Global Media’s RFE/RL federal funding grant and its impact.

Fellow

Muhammad Tahir

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Eurasia Center

Central Asia Media

The post Tahir in MSNBC on how Trump’s decision to cut Radio Free Europe comes at a great cost to democracy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Critics fear the move will strengthen the position of authoritarian regimes around the world while leaving millions of people in closed societies without access to independent information. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty CEO Steve Capus called the step “a massive gift to America’s enemies.” He warned that the shutdown would make the United States weaker and would be celebrated by “the Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk.”

Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza was one of numerous activists from the front lines of the fight against resurgent authoritarianism to voice their alarm over the closures. For many people living in authoritarian societies, outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have provided an objective and trustworthy alternative to what is often a heavily censored domestic information space. Kara-Murza suggested the demise of these outlets would be toasted in Moscow and beyond. “One more champagne bottle opened in the Kremlin,” he quipped.

As expected, the shutdown of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America was enthusiastically welcomed on prime time Russian state TV. Margarita Simonyan, who heads Russia’s flagship international media platform RT and state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya, called the news an “awesome decision by Trump.” Meanwhile, fellow Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov took time out from fantasizing about a nuclear attack on Britain to mock the more than one thousand journalists now facing an uncertain future. “You are nasty, lying, deplorable traitors to the motherland. Go and die in a ditch,” he commented.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

For decades, authoritarian regimes ranging from Nazi Germany to Communist China have griped against the influence of US-funded independent media outlets, and have adopted various measures to try and block them. Voice of America was first set up in 1942 at the height of World War II, while Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was established in 1950 during the early years of the Cold War to provide uncensored information to people living behind the Iron Curtain.

Initially focused on radio broadcasts, these outlets and their numerous affiliates have evolved over time to become multimedia platforms reaching hundreds of millions of people every week. This has never been a purely altruistic endeavor; advocates maintain that providing access to objective information abroad strengthens the US position internationally.

Until their dramatic recent shutdown, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and many other regional pro-democracy platforms such as Radio Free Asia were all overseen by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). While often the subject of debate in the United States due to allegations of political bias and doubts over their continued effectiveness, recent studies have indicated that they remained widely recognized by international audiences as important sources of unfiltered information.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Tue, June 17, 2025 • 1:00 pm ET

Drones, defense, and diplomacy: Negotiations and the battlefield in Ukraine

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Despite being funded by the US government, the network adhered to a code of journalistic integrity and objectivity similar to the charters governing the work of other state-funded media such as the BBC. This independence from governmental editorial oversight had on occasion led to issues with United States officials. Some within the Trump White House attempted to justify the decision to cut funding by claiming that these state-funded broadcasters had become overly politicized and were no longer representative of the values the new administration wished to project.

The international impact of the USAGM stable of media outlets is perhaps most immediately apparent in the number of journalists jailed or otherwise targeted by authoritarian regimes for their professional activities. At present, ten journalists and staff members from USAGM-affiliated outlets are being held in countries including Belarus, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Myanmar. Following news of the shutdowns, Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev posted that while imprisoned by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, he was subjected to electric shock torture specifically because he had previously worked for Radio Liberty.

The timing of Trump’s decision to shut down the United States international broadcasting network could hardly be worse. In today’s increasingly multipolar world, the information space is an critical front in the escalating global struggle between rival democratic and authoritarian camps. This has long been recognized by China and Russia, with both countries committing vast annual budgets to support sophisticated international media activities in a variety of guises. The US was previously seen as the world leader in this soft power contest, but that is suddenly no longer the case. Generations of autocratic regimes never did manage to silence Voice of America, but the Trump administration has now done so themselves.

Mercedes Sapuppo is assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Feb 25, 2025

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By Shelby Magid

A diplomatic clash at the UN has illustrated the dramatic divide that has emerged between the United States and Europe since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump just over one month ago, writes Shelby Magid.

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Vladimir Putin has backed Donald Trump’s call for a partial ceasefire but his insistence on disarming Ukraine reveals his continued determination to complete the conquest of the country, writes Peter Dickinson.

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With the future of US support for Ukraine in doubt, Britain is leading European efforts to bolster the Ukrainian war effort and deny Putin an historic victory that would place the whole of Europe in peril, writes Alina Hrytsenko.

Conflict Defense Industry

The post Silencing Voice of America will only strengthen autocrats around the world appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Introduction

2024 has brought a time of renewed upheaval in Mexico, six years after the election that fundamentally changed the political and economic systems of the country. Claudia Sheinbaum, standard-bearer for the incumbent Morena party, won the presidency in June 2024, the first ever woman to do so. The presidential and legislative elections were among the most decisive in Mexican history. With her victory comes a spate of questions about the political and economic future of the country, as she moves to cement the momentous political reforms her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), set into motion. In such a time of transformation, the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Index remains deeply illuminating.

Starting in the late 1980s, Mexico underwent a series of structural transformations that have significantly modified the nature of the state, the market, and their relationship in the country. At the tail end of the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s seventy-year single-party rule, public and international pressure brought about a democratic transformation that included the emergence of wide-ranging independent and technical institutions, with remits of electoral integrity, monetary policy, competition, statistics, transparency, and the specific regulation of markets. The state’s interventionist role in the economy was reduced, with an overarching privatization process that, among other things, touched banking, telecommunications, and infrastructure. More structural economic change came with free trade agreements and their upward pressure on competition in the private sector. Most notable among them was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which along with its 2018 successor the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) has shifted the economic matrix over three decades from significantly primary to mostly secondary and tertiary activity: Where oil-related products once represented almost 20 percent of exports in the early-mid 1990s, today they account for less than 5 percent; instead, manufacturing has climbed to approximately 90 percent of exports over the past decade. Several notable milestones have followed:

• Technocratic rule prevailed for years and favored a relatively unfettered private market.
• The ruling party lost in the 2000 presidential election—a first in seven decades—to a right-wing party.
• The 2018 landslide election of a left-leaning populist prompted changes to the nature of the state-market relationship by strongly favoring the role of the state. 
• The concentration of power has accelerated since 2024, when the incumbent ruling party achieved a legislative supermajority (via a friendly legal interpretation) and full judicial control (through a constitutional amendment). The promise, at least on paper, is not only to give extraordinary weight to the state but also to give force to the market as an engine for growth and prosperity. The result of this experiment is yet to be known.

Taking a step back to examine the Mexican index from its beginning in 1995, we can see a notable difference between the freedom and prosperity indices. On the one hand, the Prosperity Index has shown a steady, though slow, rise over the past twenty-eight years from 55.4 to 65.8 (the COVID-19 crisis notwithstanding). On the other hand, the Freedom Index shows Mexico rated only slightly higher than in 1995, despite a significant period of improvement in the 2000s. We can see two distinct inflection points that form a kind of “plateau” of higher freedom scores, around the years 2000 and 2018. The former coincides with the election of Vicente Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN), to the presidency, enabled through democratic reforms in the 1980s (including the establishment of the precursor to today’s National Electoral Institute). His rise marked a momentous moment in Mexican politics as the first president from outside the PRI, which had previously enjoyed essentially single-party rule since 1929.

The second inflection point, in 2018, is particularly notable as it includes the effects of two countervailing forces on the Freedom Index. The first is the signing of the USMCA, which according to the index’s methodology resulted in a significant increase in economic freedoms. The second is the election of AMLO, who rose to power on a wave of antielite sentiment. Once in power he began implementing his unique brand of populist governance, combining a redistributive fiscal policy with democratic backsliding and power consolidation. These features have blended to create a notable downward trend in freedoms over a half a decade, as we will explore in detail below, though they also have contributed to the continued improvement in some of the prosperity indices.

Focusing on the past five years, the index shows the continuation of a trend that is rare in the region and elsewhere—the decoupling of freedom and prosperity. Mexico is one of the few cases in the last five years, together with Nicaragua and Chile, where prosperity has continued to increase while freedom has declined. This is contrary to the wider trend in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, where both indices have declined.

In a marked shift from its categorization as “mostly free” in the 2023 index, Mexico is classified in the 2024 edition as a “low freedom” country, ranked 90 in the world—reflecting accumulated, significant antidemocratic shifts over the years of the AMLO presidency. Mexico continues to be “moderately prosperous,” though the changes underlying the reductions in freedom can be expected to damage prosperity as well, sooner rather than later. 

Atlantic Council research suggests that, in general, the level of freedom in a country plays a significant causal role in its prosperity. The effect of a significant shift in freedoms is usually delayed by several years, taking up to two decades to manifest fully. In the case of the recent reductions in freedom in Mexico, the economic effects are likely to be felt much sooner. For example, as I will discuss below, judicial reforms are likely to pose an enormous challenge for the private sector and the renegotiation of the USMCA in the coming year, which could have severe economic ramifications for the country, as uncertainty affects investment climate. In the context of the current authoritarian shift in Mexican politics, this highlights the importance of steadfast, long-term public policy. That said, whether we continue to see this divergence going forward through the Sheinbaum presidency is yet to be seen.

Evolution of freedom

Mexico’s Freedom Index score has continued its decline, falling almost six points to 63.3 over the five years leading up to 2023. The score is characterized, after a decade of stop-start improvement, by a sharp fall since 2018, driven by declining political and legal freedoms. While Latin American countries have seen declining freedoms in this timeframe, Mexico’s slide is an outlier. Despite starting the period with a higher freedom score than the rest of the region, it has now slipped well below the average of 66.4, ranking eighteenth among the twenty-four nations in LAC, and the trendline continues to be negative. While economic freedom has been steady at around 76 after a notable drop in 2019, legal and political freedom scores have plunged since 2018. Mexico’s legal freedom score is 48.6, down from 54 in 2018; in fact, while the score has steadied in the past year, recent judicial developments (discussed below) suggest that we will see a severe drop next year. Political freedom has recorded an even more severe decline, dropping over ten points to 65.4 in 2023.

We can see several notable declines within the political subindex. Political rights have fallen steeply in the past five years. Mexico has dropped over twelve points and twenty-five places in the international rankings, and well down among the LAC countries in the nineteenth position. This score reflects the adversarial stance of the former AMLO government regarding criticism, opposition, public protest, and most significantly, the freedom of the press. The president presided over a militarized response to anti-femicide protests in Mexico City, for example, and he continued to constantly attack specific press representatives during his mandate. On one occasion in February 2024, he revealed the private phone number of a New York Times journalist during a live press conference; on another, he exposed private income and tax information of a Mexican one.

In another sign of democratic backsliding, the elections score has declined almost three points to 89.1. As president, AMLO often used his platform to campaign for members of his party as well as continuously attack political opponents from his privileged tribune, contrary to legal principles. The decline also reflects the fact that while the National Electoral Institute (INE) remains de jure independent, it has been subject to relentless political pressure and intervention, as well as severe funding cuts. The former president accused the institute of fraud and sought to centralize it under the executive. Furthermore, the legislature—controlled by the ruling party, Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional, or Morena—has continued to leave the Elections Tribunal without its required seven magistrates. Those threats and the loss of funding have yet to translate into a further deterioration of election integrity; nonetheless, it remains part of a worrying trend.

On a similar note, the most severe decline was in the legislative constraints on the executive score, which fell almost thirty points to 36.3 in 2023. This period coincided with AMLO’s sweeping election and legislative majorities (including a supermajority in the Chamber of Deputies), giving the administration a period of total legislative control until the supermajority was lost in 2021 (coinciding with a brief uptick in the constraints score). However, AMLO continued to undermine legislative independence: for example, forcing through legislation in violation of procedure. With Sheinbaum’s election victory in 2024 came not only the presidency but a questionable supermajority in the Congress of the Union. In fact, the ruling coalition now controls 73 percent of the Chamber of Deputies with 54 percent of the popular vote for the chamber, against a constitutional limit of 8 percent for the difference between representation and vote share. Despite initially falling one vote short in the Senate, a subsequent—questionable in its form—defection from the opposition has handed the coalition a supermajority across both bodies for the first time since the 1990s. Morena has also sought to remove additional constraints on executive power, for instance by following through on the elimination of several key autonomous agencies. These include the National Institute of Transparency Access to Information and Data Protection (INAI), an essential resource for government accountability; the Federal Economic Competition Commission, known as COFECE, which has a broad antitrust and competition remit; the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), which is in charge of the evaluation of social programs and for poverty reduction strategy; the Federal Telecommunications Institute, the telecom regulator; and the Energy Regulatory Commission. The proposal was passed in November 2024, ostensibly to reduce costs, though the savings will amount to less than 0.05 percent of the federal budget. This follows years of AMLO hamstringing the agencies via unfilled appointments and budget cuts. Additionally, while Sheinbaum’s government made some changes to AMLO’s initial proposal to remain compliant with USMCA provisions, potentially compromised regulatory functions may yet violate the treaty if they end up favoring state-owned entities.

A similar dismantling on presidential checks and balances characterizes the decline in the legal subindex score. Apart from informality, which has been steady, every other legal indicator has fallen sharply since 2018, driving a twenty-one-place drop in global rankings for Mexico. Judicial independence has nose-dived to 50.4 from 62.2, reflecting an extended offensive from the Morena government against the national judiciary. AMLO appointed four justices to the Supreme Court of the Justice of the Nation, including a party insider with no judicial experience. He has repeatedly accused the court of treachery and corruption, encouraged public anger at the court’s president, threatened the pensions of judiciary workers, and slashed the court’s budget. Among the most contentious political issues of the past two years is a radical judicial overhaul, first proposed by AMLO but supported by, and eventually passed under, President Sheinbaum in late 2024. In a world first, the reform aims to require every judge in the system (over 17,000) to be elected by popular vote along with a reduction by two seats in the size of the Supreme Court. A significant portion of the candidates will be prescreened by the ruling Morena party. This presents severe dangers to the rule of law and independence in the judiciary, with judges exposed to the influence of political pressure and public sentiment on what should be a fully indifferent, impartial process. Legal interpretations will become unreliable as politicization in the judiciary results in inconsistent ad-hoc rulings. The role of the judiciary as a check on the executive and legislative will be greatly diminished, primarily by means of its ability to intervene against political parties and other political actors which will now control its judges’ candidacies. Despite the imminent need for significant improvement and the administration’s continuous attacks on and heavy-handed influencing of the court, it had remained de jure independent; but the recent judicial reform throws even that into question.

The ramifications of this fundamental reform, which undermines the capacity and oversight of the judiciary, will be manifold. This includes effects on the Mexican economy, as discussed below, but to start with, top-to-bottom elections set for June 2025 will cost $650 million. These expensive elections come in the context of one of budgets aiming at reducing the historically high fiscal deficit of 2024through severe fiscal consolidation in 2025.

The fight against corruption, which has been a key justification for Morena’s authoritarian measures like the judicial reform, has shown little signs of improvement over the past five years. On the contrary, some notable loci of corruption have only emerged during recent years. In one case, the director of the recently established Institute to Return Stolen Property to the People (INDEP) resigned after explosive revelations of theft within the agency. The agency was established to redistribute the value of assets seized from criminals to the Mexican people (though critics argued it simply renamed an existing agency with the same purpose); instead, “multimillion dollar corruption” has plagued its operations. Additionally, while seized assets were previously used solely to compensate victims of crime, the new agency has opaque authority to distribute funds as it pleases, including to other political priorities, increasing risks of cronyism on top of corruption.

The judicial reform is likely to exacerbate the problem by politicizing judicial officials in lower courts and opening them to the influence of political interests and even crime. Additionally, the elimination of key autonomous oversight agencies, as discussed above, is likely to lead to less transparency and accountability for two reasons. One is that by destroying the agencies and absorbing their functions into the executive branch, regulatory and antitrust capacity are likely to suffer significantly, likely allowing more cases of bad practice to fall through the cracks. Additionally, they would be less likely to scrutinize entities associated with the executive. Similarly, while in office AMLO also directed a growing share of economic power to the sole purview of the military, including seaports, airports, customs processing, and major pet infrastructure projects like Tren Maya (Maya Train) and the Trans-Isthmic Corridor. Removing the requirement of competitive bidding and procurement, along with limited outside oversight of militarized economic activity, raise additional transparency and accountability concerns.

Militarization was also a key component of AMLO’s approach to security. In this case, a relatively flat trendline may belie a regression in Mexico’s internal security situation; the former president’s conciliatory approach to cartel violence has failed to reduce their impunity; despite misleading assurances to the contrary, a government agency confirmed that more homicides occurred during AMLO’s time in office than any other Mexican president in history. He also reversed course on his support for Mexico’s “desaparecidos,” over 100,000 unsolved cases of criminal kidnapping. However, President Sheinbaum’s approach to security may prove to be a case of significantly distancing herself from the previous government. Instead of continuing AMLO’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy, she seems willing to rely more on action than inaction, and on counterintelligence and coordination to combat and deter unsustainable levels of violence. This enormous change will be legitimized (vis-à-vis AMLO) by the need to opt for a completely different approach when put between a rock and a hard place by the United States, threatened with a 25 percent blanket tariff if inaction and lack of cooperation occur in terms of tackling drug-trafficking organizations and migration.

Finally, the clarity of law has also suffered, with Mexico dropping twenty-seven places in global rankings and losing eleven points to reach a score of 37.6. This metric assesses whether Mexican laws are general, public, consistent, and predictably enforced. Indeed, all four of those characteristics were tested repeatedly by the previous administration, perhaps most notably in an anticompetitive electricity reform bill that was struck down by the Supreme Court in early 2024. Now that Morena has pushed through its judicial overhaul, it is likely that such distortions of the clarity of the law will have fewer checks going forward, whether through anticompetitive measures from the government or unpredictable enforcement by a judicial system in disarray. Further reduction in the clarity of the law has taken place via government abridgments of private property rights.

The economic subindex shows only a moderate decline of three points since 2018. However, within the average lies an interesting dynamic, with subindices moving in different directions. On one hand, trade freedom and investment freedom show a marked increase in 2018, following the ratification of the USMCA. Trade freedom especially benefited from the agreement, showing further improvement in 2020 once the agreement was ratified.

On the other hand, the property rights score has decreased dramatically following the 2018 election. Despite being an enshrined principle in the constitution, the previous administration took several notable actions to weaken the right to private property and fair treatment of that property by the government. In 2019, the government passed a law equating tax evasion with organized crime and assigned the corresponding punishment; among its outcomes is the ability to enforce mandatory pretrial detention without bail as well as asset forfeiture prior to a guilty verdict. While this was later overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, citing unconstitutionality, such court-ordered rollbacks are less likely given the recent erosion of judicial independence. We can see the effect of this law on the sharp drop in the score in 2019. This follows from one of the broader themes of the past AMLO administration, which was active interventionism and an anticompetitive role for the state in a variety of sectors. For example, AMLO’s energy nationalism has resulted in more and more of the government’s fiscal eggs going into the basket of Pemex, the state-owned oil company, at the expense of private investment in both fossil fuel energy production as well as, critically, renewables. This is likely to be another area where President Sheinbaum distances herself from her mentor and predecessor as she recently presented an Energy Plan which included private-sector participation through mixed investment and the reprioritization of energy transition through renewable generation. It is yet to be seen, however, what the practical implementation of such a plan will be and how a much more doubtful private sector will respond to these recent policy shifts.

It is important to also mention that the government showed a particular tendency to infringe on property rights when pushing AMLO’s pet projects; for example, in May 2023 the government illegally seized a privately administered rail track, despite a legal contract granting the company its concession, to advance the Trans-Isthmic Corridor rail initiative. Additionally, in 2023, the government sent armed military, in contravention of court order, to seize the port assets of an American company in Playa del Carmen. In the final days of his presidency, AMLO issued a decree expropriating the entirety of that private land for a nature reserve. He has previously suggested using the rare deepwater port as a cruise dock; it is also the only port in the region capable of transporting the required raw materials for the Tren Maya, which has been subject to considerable environmental and economic criticism from opponents. Neither of those two incidents are reflected in the property rights score for the past two years, but they will affect foreign investment, particularly from the United States, and resulted in a sharp rebuke from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While President Sheinbaum has taken a conciliatory tone with foreign investors so far, it remains to be seen how she will align further concentration of power with an environment of enablement and certainty for business development in Mexico.

By contrast, despite some concerning years when women’s marches were met with the use of force, the women’s economic freedom score has stayed flat at 88.8 and now offers reason for cautious optimism. President Sheinbaum plans to introduce several policies aimed at advancing women’s empowerment, including supplemental pensions for women aged sixty to sixty-four and an extension of parental leave. She also has proposed a National Care System aimed at supporting unpaid work (like childcare) that traditionally falls to women, though funding for the system has yet to be established.

Evolution of prosperity

Despite the dramatic backsliding in political, economic, and legal freedoms, Mexico has mostly resisted a similar decline in the Prosperity Index during the same period, rising six places in the global rankings. Despite a foundation of macroeconomic stability, overall growth has remained frustratingly low relative to its potential. Its score has tracked fairly closely with the regional level since 1995.

While Mexico’s global prosperity score rose above pre-COVID-19 levels in 2022, in contrast to the regional average, the income subindex shows the opposite: Mexico remains below its pre-COVID levels, while the region on average has surpassed them. This can be attributed to the government’s low levels of fiscal support (0.7 percent of gross domestic product) during the pandemic, which stands in stark contrast to others in the region such as Brazil, which spent close to 9 percent of GDP on its response. Even before COVID-19, the economic growth of Mexico suffered a significant deceleration. During the first year of AMLO’s government, the economy contracted by 0.1 percent and the compounded average growth of his term (excluding 2024) is less than 1 percent. The economy notably underperformed compared to the just-under 2 percent compounded annual growth seen over the three preceding administrations from 2001 to 2018.

There are also lagging indicators that suggest constraints on growth going forward. For example, while overall foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown in recent years (mostly due to profit reinvestment), new FDI inflows show a different story. Fresh FDI inflows via equity capital have plunged steeply from $15.3 billion in the first three quarters of 2022 to only $2.0 billion for the same period in 2024, based on the latest Mexican government data.

Despite sluggish income growth, Mexico has made significant strides in reducing inequality since 2018, moving up eleven places in the global rankings and five points to 57.7. This has been driven by AMLO’s social policy; for example, the minimum wage has nearly tripled since 2018 (by decree, rather than as a result of higher productivity and competition), and poverty has declined by 20 percent since 2020, in large part due to a costly and enormous rise in cash transfers. This creates further fiscal pressures at a time when the country is running its highest deficit in almost four decades, at 5.9 percent of GDP. Remittances have also virtually doubled from about $8 billion in the first quarter of 2019 to $14 billion in the first quarter of 2024. (International Monetary Fund research has shown that remittances have a downward effect on inequality in Mexico). It should be noted, however, that the rate of improvement in the inequality score has remained reasonably consistent since 2012.

On the environment, the index shows Mexico suffered only a slight decrease from 67.2 in 2018 to 67 in 2023. This reflects a flat trend, on average, for emissions, air pollution deaths, and access to clean cooking technology. In the case of Mexico, however, this obscures significant setbacks in environmental progress from a policy perspective. Mexico dropped seven places to 39 in the 2024 Climate Change Performance Index, which rated its climate policy as “low performance.” AMLO’s oil nationalism prioritized public investments in the floundering state-owned oil supermajor, pushing out competition and heavily disincentivizing investment in renewable energy and the wider green transition. Additionally, some of the administration’s pet projects, particularly the Tren Maya, have been criticized for environmental damage to sensitive ecosystems of the Yucatán peninsula. According to Global Forest Watch, primary forest loss saw a large increase in 2019 and 2020. This was likely due to the misguided Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) policy, which aimed to address rural poverty and environmental degradation but resulted in large tracts of forest destroyed for timber or agriculture—despite many of the landowners having been compensated for protecting existing forest under the prior government’s policy regime. The data shows a marked improvement in 2021, suggesting the government acted to stymie Sembrando Vida’s negative externalities.

The path forward

Thus far, democratic backsliding has seemingly been either aligned with the will of the voters; a cost they are willing to pay for cash transfers, a renewed hope derived from populist rhetoric, or as punishment to previous governments. Or perhaps Mexicans simply don’t care or do not acknowledge – due to a lack of effective engagement and communication from previous governments – material benefit from a rather ethereal concept: democracy. AMLO’s presidency came with noticeable material improvements in many lives, as we can see with significant progress on poverty, inequality, remittances (though unrelated to his policies), and the minimum wage. Additionally, the political opposition is in total disarray, tainted with accusations of elitism and corruption—and without capacity to self-assess, regroup, and present a compelling alternative. AMLO, with his singular star power, and now Claudia Sheinbaum with more than 75 percent popularity (in January 2025), have effectively capitalized on their absence with an inclusive narrative of economic nationalism and executive strength.

On top of backsliding, the targeted problems of corruption, lack of security, and a culture of privilege remain largely unsolved. Additionally, the risks of continuing down the path of democratic retrenchment are immense and wide-ranging. The politicization of the judicial system risks an even deeper loss of public trust in the law as well as deeper entrenchment of a single hegemonic party, further reducing the viability of a basic democratic requirement: a strong opposition, which has also inflicted significant self-damage to be seen as an appealing and trustworthy political option.  

In addition to driving a cycle of continuously shrinking freedoms, the existing approach may also struggle to generate an adequate growth engine required for improvements in economic vibrancy. The country is facing several headwinds in achieving its growth potential in the medium term. For one thing, returning the budget deficit to manageable levels—Sheinbaum has pledged to meet a 3.9 percent deficit target in 2025—will require fiscal trade-offs. It will require the president to confront her government’s relationship with Pemex, the roughly $100 billion elephant in the room. While her predecessor injected almost $100 billion into Pemex via direct financing and tax breaks, production declined and losses doubled to $8.1 billion in October 2024 compared to a year earlier. The company’s debt now stands at almost 6 percent of the entire country’s GDP and the government has pledged almost $7 billion more this year amid a rapidly tightening budgetary environment. The Pemex albatross will hang heavily on the sovereign balance sheet, as we are seeing already. Along with concerns about the constitutional reform, Pemex’s fiscal burden helped drive Moody’s latest downgrading of Mexico’s debt outlook from “stable” to “negative” in November 2024.

Additionally, Mexico’s macroeconomic scenario is highly dependent on foreign trade, particularly its integration with the United States and Canada via the USMCA. Exports accounted for over 40 percent of Mexico’s GDP in 2022, and over 80 percent of those exports went to the United States. Those who invest and trade with Mexico crave certainty, particularly in a context of transformative changes to international supply chains. However, current uncertainty is driven by two key factors, one domestic and one international. Domestically, dramatic policy change toward concentration of power, fewer checks and balances, and less competitive markets are likely to alarm international investors as well as curtail domestic economic activity. The latter factor concerns Mexico’s trade relationships within North America, especially the outcome of USMCA negotiations and their effect on nearshoring growth. Donald Trump, following his decisive electoral victory in the United States, has advocated for extreme trade protectionism, including against Mexican imports. While rhetoric must soon give way to actual policy implementation for the Trump administration, it remains to be seen if his most severe threats will be realized, such as the imposition of a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports that would have likely been implemented the first day of February, had the Mexican president not engaged in a forty-five-minute call with Trump in which, among other things, she committed to the immediate deployment of 10,000 military forces in the northern border area of the country. The coming four years, but particularly this year, are expected to be quite uncertain as, according to mostly vague thresholds of cooperation on organized crime and migration, the main anchor of the Mexican economy (trade with the US) will become extremely volatile.

One thing is for sure: There will be uncertain and tense times ahead, beginning with the first months of the second Trump administration and continuing until an agreement for a revamped trade agreement is in place, most probably, one which considers a form of sectoral customs union. Mexico is the main US trading partner and source of imports. Mexico also is among the top trading partners of the majority of the fifty US states, so having a free trade agreement that anchors certainty and promotes competitiveness and productivity in North America is a matter of priority for the United States as well. That said, one should expect a great deal of rhetoric and threats to stand in the way before a consensus emerges. Mexico will have to stay focused and display a sophisticated and effective multilevel strategy to reduce uncertainty and enhance its position in the negotiating process. The most important aspect will be managing the effects of rhetoric on business sentiment and avoiding the implementation of drastic and costly measures for Mexicans and the country’s economy.

The drop in FDI noted above is a foreboding sign. Investors had been awaiting the outcomes of the Mexican judicial reform and the US election, among other factors, and now they watchfully wait to see the Trump administration’s actual policies. Meanwhile, so far, Mexico has seized less of the unique nearshoring opportunity than it should have from Asian competitors like India and Vietnam. To do so, it must still meet important nearshoring requirements such as improvements in infrastructure, energy reliability, and security.

In conclusion, the past several years of deepening democratic retrenchment have culminated in a seismic shift in Mexican politics. Despite continued improvements in poverty and inequality and steady, if low, income growth, these reductions in freedoms may soon threaten Mexico’s prosperity in the medium term. Most of the population has fluctuated between eagerness and indifference vis-à-vis these changes so far. If President Sheinbaum and Morena continue to consolidate power and reduce checks and balances, it may be too late to reverse course once the full effects are felt.

President Sheinbaum has made her choice on the political transformation of the country, moving toward more concentration of power in the executive and the cancellation of several checks and balances which, however imperfect and thus improvable, were there as both limit and anchor. Her second conundrum will be around the economic system, where a series of contradictions derived from the chosen course of action in the political sphere will play out. We have yet to see what can become of a new model and a new trend in the world: regimes with autocratic features or even full-blown autocracies that create the avenues, spaces, and conditions for the private sector to accommodate and flourish in an era of deglobalization and strategic ally shoring; post-truth politics and social media; and a more polarized and volatile ecosystem.

Note: The text of this report was finalized in February of 2025.

Vanessa Rubio-Márquez is professor in practice and associate dean for extended education at the London School of Economics’ (LSE) School of Public Policy. She is also a member of the Freedom and Prosperity Advisory Council at the Atlantic Council, an associate fellow at Chatham House, and a member of organizations such as the Mexican Council of International Affairs, the International Women’s Forum, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, and LSE’s Latin America and the Caribbean Center. Previously, Rubio-Marquez had a twenty-five-year career in Mexico’s public sector, including serving as three-times deputy minister (Finance, Social Development, and Foreign Affairs) and senator.

The Atlantic Council and its staff, fellows, and directors generate their own ideas and programming, consistent with the Council’s mission, their related body of work, and the independent records of the participating team members. The Council as an organization does not adopt or advocate positions on particular matters. The Council’s publications always represent the views of the author(s) rather than those of the institution.

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Trump’s commitment to securing a peace deal clearly resonated with American voters, many of whom have long since grown tired of financing a brutal conflict that is now in its fourth year. Nevertheless, his apparent emphasis on rebuilding ties with Russia while pressuring Ukraine is sparking mounting alarm, both internationally and among domestic US audiences.

In the first days of his presidency, Trump’s initial diplomatic overtures seemed very much in line with his campaign trail talk of “peace through strength,” and included suggestions of tougher sanctions on Moscow. However, in recent weeks there has been a striking change in tone that has been accompanied by landmark news that the United States intends to dramatically reduce its role in European security.

The first sign of a major shift in US policy toward the war in Eastern Europe was the decision to embark on bilateral talks with Russia without Ukrainian or European participation. Then came a series of verbal attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who Trump branded a “dictator,” along with suggestions that Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s invasion.

This culminated on February 28, when Zelenskyy’s White House visit descended into a bitter and very public Oval Office spat that sent shock waves around the world. Although both sides have since indicated their readiness to reengage, the United States has underlined its displeasure by pausing all military assistance to Ukraine.

While Trump has adopted an increasingly uncompromising stance toward Ukraine, his Russian outreach has so far been marked by complimentary language, expressions of trust, and talk of new economic opportunities. Unsurprisingly, the signals coming from the new US administration have been warmly welcomed by the Kremlin. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov noted on March 2 that Trump’s rapidly changing foreign policy configurations now “largely coincide with our own.”

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Across Europe, Trump’s pursuit of a radical Russian reset has seriously undermined faith in the transatlantic alliance and led to a flurry of summits calling for urgent European rearmament. Closer to home, there are growing signs of disquiet in the United States over what many see as the new administration’s unprecedented turn toward Moscow.

It is not difficult to imagine why some in the US may be feeling uneasy about Trump’s approach to reviving relations with Russia. While polls have shown gradually declining public support for Ukraine, most data indicates that a majority still back the country in its fight against Russia’s ongoing invasion. Meanwhile, there is very little evidence of any American enthusiasm for Putin’s Russia.

In a fairly typical February 2025 Gallup poll, 63 percent of Americans viewed Ukraine favorably, while the figure for Russia was just 17 percent. Another recent survey found that 69 percent of Republican voters believe Russia is the aggressor and 83 percent disapprove of Putin. In a Reuters poll conducted in early March, Republican respondents were similarly dismissive of attempts to shift responsibility for Putin’s invasion onto Ukraine, with just 11 percent agreeing that the country was more to blame for the war.

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In recent weeks, there have been some rumblings of discontent from within the Republican Party itself. While Republicans largely remained quiet during the initial stages of Trump’s Russia policy shift, that may now be changing. When the United States sided with Moscow at the United Nations in late February to vote against a resolution condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins described the move as “shameful.”

Fellow Republican senator John Curtis said he was “deeply troubled” to see the US aligning with Russia and the likes of North Korea at the UN. “These are not our friends,” he commented. “This posture is a dramatic shift from American ideals of freedom and democracy. We all want an end to the war, but it must be achieved on terms that ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty and security and that deter Putin from pursuing further territorial ambitions.”

Some of the most pointed criticism of Trump’s efforts to broker negotiations between Russia and Ukraine has come from Republican congressman Don Bacon, who said the US leader should not have called Zelenskyy a dictator and also suggested he was far from alone in thinking so. “Many Republicans know what the president said was wrong,” Bacon commented. “Putin started this invasion. He is the dictator. He has killed all of his opponents. Zelenskyy was rightfully elected.”

There has also been push back from prominent Trump backers within the US media. As the president’s attacks on Ukraine’s Zelenskyy escalated in late February, Fox News host and longtime Trump loyalist Mark Levin responded by stating, “MAGA doesn’t support Putin.” Meanwhile, the normally pro-Trump New York Post ran a front page story featuring a giant portrait of Vladimir Putin alongside the banner headline: “President Trump: This is a dictator.”

The US Senate’s second most senior Republican woman, Lisa Murkowski, was one of the few party members to directly voice her concern following the disastrous recent Oval Office meeting. “I know foreign policy is not for the faint of heart, but right now, I am sick to my stomach,” she commented. “The administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin, a threat to democracy and US values around the world.”

It is still far too early to talk about serious domestic opposition to Trump’s Russia strategy. After more than three years of relentless bloodshed in Ukraine, many welcome his efforts to break the diplomatic deadlock and will applaud loudly if he is able to broker some kind of deal. However, recent expressions of dissatisfaction from Trump’s Republican Party colleagues and his own support base should serve as a warning against any attempt to abandon Ukraine entirely or impose a Kremlin-friendly peace.

Katherine Spencer is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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Trump and Zelenskyy had been due to sign off on a landmark minerals partnership agreement that was intended to strengthen ties between Kyiv and Washington, DC, but the two leaders instead became embroiled in an increasingly angry exchange in front of the cameras over the terms of a potential peace deal with Russia. The Ukrainian delegation left the White House with the document still unsigned, leaving the future direction of bilateral relations in question.

The shocking scenes in the Oval Office rapidly went viral, sparking considerable international unease. The sense of disquiet was strongest in Europe, with numerous officials and commentators across the continent concluding that the rift confirmed their worst fears over Trump’s shifting foreign policy priorities and his commitment to European security.

In Ukraine, millions watched video footage of the White House argument in disbelief. Ukrainians were hoping the meeting would mark a welcome change in tone following weeks of mounting tensions that had seen their president branded a “dictator” by Trump and excluded from talks between the United States and Russia. Instead, they were faced with what appeared to be a complete breakdown in communication with their country’s most important ally and main supplier of critical military assistance.

Many Ukrainians were angered and dismayed by what they saw as Trump and Vance’s confrontational stance toward Zelenskyy. At various points in the heated exchange, the two US leaders appeared to question Ukraine’s war effort and suggest the country was in no position to be making demands, while also accusing Zelenskyy of being insufficiently grateful for US support.

Strikingly, neither man voiced any criticism of Russian ruler Vladimir Putin for launching the largest European invasion since World War II. On the contrary, Trump indicated that he did not welcome Zelenskyy’s hostility toward the Kremlin dictator. “You see the hatred he’s got for Putin,” Trump told the assembled press during the Zelenskyy meeting. “It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. He’s got tremendous hatred. And I understand that. But I can tell you the other side’s not exactly in love with him either.”

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

As news of the disastrous Oval Office meeting spread across Ukraine, there was a clear effort to demonstrate a united front and rally around the flag. This response was hardly surprising. After all, Ukrainians have been fighting for national survival ever since Russia’s attack began eleven years ago with the seizure of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine. Since 2014, they have become familiar with the significant challenges their country faces as Ukrainian officials seek to maintain support in Washington and other Western capitals.

Zelenskyy’s main political rival Petro Poroshenko led the way, vowing to refrain from any criticism and saying that Ukraine needed to respond to events in the US by demonstrating unity. Other politicians followed suit. “Under no circumstances should we agree to calls for the president to resign, and I’m saying that as an opposition Member of Parliament. That defies the very idea of democracy,” said Inna Sovsun.

Many Ukrainians expressed their pride in Zelenskyy for what they saw as his refusal to be intimidated and his insistence on pressing the issue of security guarantees. “If we are for real, we haven’t spoken with such dignity since writing to the sultan,” commented Ukrainian political activist Anastasiya Paraskevova, referencing a celebrated but likely apocryphal series of seventeenth century letters sent by the Ukrainian Cossacks to the Ottoman Sultan and immortalized in a painting by Ilya Repin. “This is the sentiment right now. Trump has actually made Zelenskyy even more popular in Ukraine.”

There were also widespread suggestions that the White House had deliberately provoked a confrontation in order to discredit Zelenskyy and undermine US support for Ukraine. “Zelenskyy could have just sat there in silence for 40 minutes without saying a word. The problem is, they would have found a reason to get offended and start a brawl anyway,” argued Ukrainian journalist and commentator Ilia Ponomorenko. “You simply can’t win with people who don’t actually want a standard, successful meeting.”

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While the overall mood in Ukraine was one of defiance, Zelenskyy’s handling of the Oval Office clash also came in for significant criticism. Ukrainian Member of Parliament Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the opposition European Solidarity Party, called the meeting “catastrophic for Ukraine” and noted that the only winner was Putin. Commenting on Zelenskyy’s role in Friday’s confrontation, Goncharenko told CNN that the Ukrainian leader needed to be “much more diplomatic” and “constructive” in his future dealings with the country’s US partners. “Mr. Trump will be president of the United States for the next four years. We need to work with him, not argue with him,” Goncharenko commented.

A common complaint among Ukrainians was that while they are being asked by the Trump administration to make concession after concession, Russia faces no such pressure. The tone of the White House meeting certainly seemed to underline Ukraine’s limited leverage as it attempts to secure the backing of the United States for a sustainable peace settlement that can prevent further Russian aggression. “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out, and if we’re out, you’ll fight it out,” Trump told Zelenskyy at one point as tempers frayed.

Mariia Zolkina of Ukraine’s Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank commented to the BBC that the war of words in Washington would add to a growing sense of injustice within Ukrainian society over the Trump administration’s strategy for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. She accused the US leader of seeking to grant Putin almost all of the objectives he has sought but failed to achieve on the battlefield during three years of full-scale war, and warned that this one-sided approach would only strengthen Ukraine’s will to resist. “Trump does not understand that millions of Ukrainians are united by a shared sense of zero tolerance toward injustice. This is what led to the revolutions of 2004 and 2014,” she noted, referencing independent Ukraine’s two pro-democracy revolutions.

While most Ukrainians were clearly shaken by the spectacle of their president arguing so publicly with Trump and Vance, the sense of shock was not shared by everyone. Some viewed the Oval Office clash as yet another reality check in a long and painful national journey that has seen Ukraine navigate more than a decade of Russian aggression while adjusting to the limitations of international assistance. “Zelenskyy was brave, but we are supplicants now,” wrote Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “Trump and the Kremlin have made it abundantly clear that Ukraine’s participation in these negotiations between the US and Russia is not necessary or desirable.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Feb 28, 2025

Putin uses NATO as an excuse for his war against Ukrainian statehood

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin claims his invasion of Ukraine was provoked by NATO expansion but his efforts to eradicate Ukrainian identity in areas under Russian occupation and his insistence regarding Ukraine’s complete disarmament reveal his ultimate goal of erasing Ukrainian statehood entirely, writes Peter Dickinson.

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UkraineAlert Feb 25, 2025

US sides with Russia against Ukraine and Europe at the United Nations

By Shelby Magid

A diplomatic clash at the UN has illustrated the dramatic divide that has emerged between the United States and Europe since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump just over one month ago, writes Shelby Magid.

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UkraineAlert Feb 20, 2025

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By Edward Verona

As the Trump administration seeks to reset relations with Russia as part of a peace process to end the war in Ukraine, Moscow is pushing the idea of increased economic cooperation, writes Edward Verona.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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To be sure, it is difficult to determine the king’s exact level of support (as Jordanian authorities prohibit polls on Abdullah’s approval ratings). But Abdullah has faced a wave of domestic criticism in recent years. Unemployment stands at 21 percent. As the Gaza war death toll soared last year, Jordanians hit the streets, assailing the government for not annulling the country’s peace treaty with Israel. In 2021, Abdullah’s half-brother—former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Al Hussein—accused Jordanian leaders of corruption and “incompetence.” He was placed under house arrest in a string of detentions reportedly related to a coup plot, but Hamzah has denied wrongdoing. 

In this challenging context, Trump called for Jordan to admit large numbers of Gazans as part of his plan to “take over” the Gaza Strip. On February 11, Abdullah met with Trump in Washington, marking the first White House visit by an Arab head of state during the current US administration. In response to Trump’s proposal, the king offered to admit two thousand ill Gazan children to Jordanian hospitals for treatment. Abdullah’s overture amounted to accepting less than 0.1 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents and was far from what Trump envisions. After the meeting, the Hashemite ruler posted on social media that he opposed the displacement of Palestinians. The next day, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi reiterated that Gazans should not be transferred to the Hashemite kingdom. 

Abdullah’s rejection of Trump’s plan won overwhelming domestic approval. Tens of thousands of Jordanians lined the Amman streets on February 13, welcoming the king home and backing his Gaza stance. Citizens carried large banners with pictures of Abdullah and slogans opposing the displacement of Palestinians. Amer Shobaki, a Jordanian analyst and staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, thanked the king for his “firm and courageous stance in preserving Jordan’s stability.”

The Jordanian support for Abdullah’s stance transcended the lines that frequently divide the kingdom. Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who make up an estimated 50 to 60 percent of the country’s population, appreciated that the king would not participate in a plan that would empty Gaza’s population and weaken the Palestinian national movement. East Bankers—Jordanians whose roots descend from the eastern side of the Jordan River—have no interest in the Hashemite kingdom absorbing an additional wave of Palestinians and further diluting their political power.

Abdullah’s rejection of Trump’s plan harkens back to populist moves by the late King Hussein. In 1991, Hussein assailed the Gulf War and took a pro-Iraq stance—despite an appeal by US President George H.W. Bush for a statement from the Jordanian leader conveying understanding of the US position. The move won widespread support among Jordanians for defending a fellow Arab state against Western powers. Thirty-five years earlier, Hussein expelled British Lieutenant General John Glubb (who at the time led the Arab Legion) to limit foreign influence over the kingdom, which many Jordanians applauded. Like his beloved father, Abdullah benefited domestically from standing up to a Western power in defense of Arab interests.

Trump’s Gaza plan has offered Abdullah an opportunity to more vocally support the Palestinian cause, a challenge for the sixty-three-year-old leader since the Gaza war erupted. Amnesty International reported that Jordanian security forces arrested over one thousand individuals at pro-Gaza protests in late 2023. In April 2024, Jordan’s Air Force shot down Iranian drones fired at Israel, with Amman insisting it was defending the security of Jordanians. Despite Hamas military spokesman Abu Obadiah’s calls for “resistance” from Jordan against Israel, Abdullah refused to open an additional front against the Jewish state, likely in part as an effort to prevent Israeli strikes against the Hashemite kingdom.

Even after Abdullah ruled out the absorption of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, Trump still praised the Hashemite leader. “King Abdullah is one of the true great leaders of the world,” Trump announced in a February 12 message to the Jordanian public. “He’s got a wonderful heart. He loves you so much.” While Trump had warned on February 10 that the fate of Jordan’s nearly $1.5 billion annual assistance package may be linked to the kingdom’s absorption of Gazans, after Abdullah’s White House visit, Trump suggested that he would no longer use aid as a threat. 

The Jordanian ruler’s diplomatic approach to tensions with the White House helped his cause. In contrast to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—who called Trump a “dog” in 2020 after Washington unveiled a peace proposal favorable to Israel—Abdullah avoided such insults following Trump’s threatening initiative. On February 11, the king called Trump a “man of peace” and lauded his role in securing a Gaza cease-fire, understanding the president’s appreciation for public praise.

Jordan faces numerous challenges. The Hashemite kingdom’s economy remains dismal. The United States may still permanently sever assistance to Amman after Washington completes the ninety-day review of US foreign aid worldwide. Such a move would add stress to the cash-strapped country. Yet, Abdullah enjoying a surge of popularity is no insignificant development. It may provide the Hashemite ruler with additional flexibility as he navigates a tense period in US-Jordan relations.

Aaron Magid hosts the podcast On Jordan and is the author of an upcoming biography on King Abdullah. A former Amman-based journalist, his articles on the Hashemite kingdom have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Al-Monitor. Follow him on X: @AaronMagid.

Note: Some Atlantic Council work funded by the US government has been paused as a result of the Trump administration’s Stop Work Orders issued under the Executive Order “Reevaluating and Realigning US Foreign Aid.”

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Welcome to the fourth edition of Global Foresight from the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, home for the last decade to one of the world’s premier strategic foresight shops.

In this year’s installment, which is part of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series, our experts present exclusive findings from our survey of leading strategists and experts around the world on how human affairs could unfold over the next ten years across geopolitics, the global economy, climate change, technological disruption, and more. Our next-generation foresight team spots six “snow leopards”—under-the-radar phenomena that could have major unexpected impacts, for better or worse, in 2025 and beyond. And our foresight practitioners imagine three scenarios for how the world could transform over the next decade as a result of China’s ascendance, worsening climate change, and an evolving international order.

Welcome to 2035

What the world could look like in ten years, according to more than 350 experts

To survey the future, we polled global strategists and foresight gurus on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the likelihood of another world war to the outcome of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

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Six snow leopards to watch in 2025

The underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize global impact

Because it receives relatively little attention in the press, the “snow leopard” does not appear significant enough to warrant much scrutiny as a driver of change and shaper of the future. Yet just like the real cat in the wild, the figurative snow leopard is something that could sneak up and vividly remind us of its power.

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Three worlds in 2035

Imagining scenarios for how global affairs could be transformed over the next decade

The Atlantic Council’s foresight team brought their globe-spanning expertise to the task of envisioning three potential future paths for humanity.

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Meet your expert guides to the future

Full survey results

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Feb 12, 2025

The Global Foresight 2025 survey: Full results

In the fall of 2024 after the outcome of the US presidential election, the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security surveyed the future, asking leading global strategists and foresight practitioners around the world to answer our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next ten years. Here are the full results.

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Matthew Kroenig

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James L. Jones
Odeh Aburdene
Paula Dobriansky
Stephen J. Hadley
Jane Holl Lute
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Stephanie Murphy
Dan Poneman
Arnold Punaro

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Consider the snow leopard. Panthera uncia sports some of the most effective camouflage in the animal kingdom, its white coat with gray and black spots blending in perfectly with the rocky, snowy Himalayan landscape it inhabits. It’s known as “the ghost of the mountains,” seeming to appear out of thin air on the rare occasions it is seen in the wild. 

There’s an equivalent phenomenon in global affairs: under-the-radar trends and events that elude even the most seasoned observer. When their effect on world affairs eventually becomes apparent, they may seem to have come out of nowhere. But these “snow leopards” were there all along. Trends slowly gathering momentum while the crisis du jour dominates headlines, technological developments whose real-world application is still theoretical, known but underrated risks—all of these phenomena have the power to reshape the future. Some already are. 

Any forecast of the future needs to account for these snow leopards. As we brought together experts across the Atlantic Council for our annual look into the future, our next-generation staff took on the challenge of spotting the hard to spot. They surveyed the world around them for overlooked risks, trawled scientific journals and the websites of obscure government departments, and came up with a list of potentially world-changing trends and developments. 

In the year to come and beyond, keep an eye on these six snow leopards. 

When you send a message on WhatsApp to a friend in Colombia or share a video call with family in India, the data—images, text, and video—gets broken down into packets and travels along undersea cables that connect continents in fractions of a second. Nearly 99 percent of international data passes through these cables, including terabytes of sensitive data sent by the US military to command posts overseas as well as an estimated ten trillion dollars transferred every day through the global financial system. In an increasingly interconnected world, nonstate actors pose a serious threat to this critical digital infrastructure, which often lies in shallow waters where it is vulnerable to everything from cyber threats to explosive devices to dragging anchors. 

It doesn’t take advanced equipment like submarines to damage these undersea cables. In 2013, for instance, Egyptian authorities arrested three divers who had used underwater explosives to slice through the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 internet cable, which runs for 12,500 miles and connects three continents. This incident came five years after a similar attack on the same cables and three years after terrorists in the Philippines successfully cut cable lines near the Filipino city of Cagayan de Oro. While the possible involvement of China and Russia in recent cord-cutting incidents has drawn international scrutiny, these prior incidents indicate that nonstate actors also perceive these cables as an opportune target.  

In late 2023, a Telegram channel affiliated with Yemen’s Houthi rebels threatened this vital underwater infrastructure by posting a map showing the subsea communications cables in the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. An ominous message accompanied the map: “There are maps of international cables connecting all regions of the world through the sea. It seems that Yemen is in a strategic location, as internet lines that connect entire continents—not only countries—pass near it.” Of note, the Houthis possess an arsenal of underwater mines, and Houthi militants have reportedly undergone combat diver training in the Red Sea.  

The Houthis’ bold assertion could inspire other nonstate actors to put undersea cables in their crosshairs, expanding the threat to this vital infrastructure beyond the region. The same day the Telegram post appeared, a Hezbollah-affiliated Telegram channel shared a similar message and questioned whether the Houthi statement was a “veiled message to the Western coalition.” 

Since these cables facilitate financial transactions and are the only hardware capable of accommodating the huge volumes of military sensor data that inform ongoing operations, terrorist groups may see them as high-value targets that can be attacked at a relatively low cost. Furthermore, non-state actors with growing cyber capabilities could exploit vulnerabilities in these networks, potentially disrupting services or stealing sensitive data. This confluence of high-tech and low-tech threats should sound alarms about the future security of global communication networks. 

Emily Milliken is an analyst focusing on Gulf security issues, and the associate director of media and communications for the N7 Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. 

In 2023, the United States produced more oil in a single year than any other country in history—largely due to fracking, which injects fluid under high pressure into rocks, cracking them open to access oil stored within them. The same technique can be used to draw cleaner sources of energy—such as the heat trapped in the earth’s crust—to the surface and send it out to homes across the United States. Geothermal energy harnesses that heat and constitutes a low-carbon energy source. With new technology on the horizon that could make it easier to utilize geothermal energy in more parts of the country, the United States is poised to unlock a major source of energy.  

Geothermal-power extraction is currently confined to traditional hydrothermal regions, mostly in the western continental United States plus Hawaii and Alaska. In these regions, conventional geothermal systems tap into the naturally occurring hot water or steam from the earth to drive turbines that generate electricity.  

Through enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), geothermal-energy production could be expanded far beyond traditional hydrothermal regions. According to the US Department of Energy, by replicating the physical dynamics present in these regions, EGS has the potential to power more than 65 million homes—a little under half of all American homes. EGS is similar to fracking in that it involves injecting fluid into the ground to create new fractures or reopen old ones, resulting in increased permeability. The hot fluid is then pumped to the surface, where it is used to generate electricity. This method works in areas where the ground is hot enough but there may not be enough naturally occurring fluid or permeability to make geothermal power viable without the addition of EGS. 

Currently, the United States has utilized less than 0.7 percent of its geothermal-electricity resources, with the remaining potential expected to become available via EGS. The Department of Energy has started to recognize the potential of EGS, funding projects in Nevada, California, and Utah. The department’s Enhanced Geothermal Shot initiative seeks to reduce the cost of EGS by 90 percent by 2035 to $45 per megawatt hour. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that, if successful, would dramatically increase access to this low- or no-carbon energy source across the United States.  

That could help address an urgent need. One analysis estimates that power demand in the United States will grow 4.7 percent over the next five years, outpacing the 0.5 percent growth in annual demand over the last decade. Though not a silver bullet, expanding access to geothermal power could help meet this demand in a clean, predictable, and relatively cheap way. 

Imran Bayoumi is an associate director at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Given the political and technical difficulties of getting countries to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they pump into the air, the quest for technologies that can remove these gases has grown ever more important. One such technology, direct air capture (DAC), involves pulling carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and permanently storing it somewhere else, usually deep underground in rock formations. Because current methods of direct air capture are costly and energy-intensive, they have made only a marginal contribution to meeting global climate goals.  

Yet carbon capture might be poised for a transformation thanks to a yellow powder. DAC technologies are expensive to scale because they use substantial amounts of water and energy and are designed to capture concentrated sources of carbon such as the exhaust from a power plant. A new CO2-absorbing material called COF-999, created by a University of California at Berkeley-led team of scientists, could collect CO2 far more cheaply, using substantially less water and energy, than current DAC processes. Utilizing a covalent organic framework—involving the strongest chemical bonds in nature—the material promises to be dependable and sustainable. The powder is less likely to be damaged by humidity, reaches half its capacity in only eighteen minutes, is reusable (it can be used through one hundred cycles of the carbon-removal process, with minimal capacity loss), and might effectively pull CO2 out of the air around us, which has far lower concentrations of carbon than, for example, power-plant exhaust. 

Current carbon-capture technology, according to some estimates, could account for 14 percent of the global-emissions reductions needed to meet climate targets by 2050. The market is already expected to rapidly expand, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 6.2 percent over the next five years and estimated value of four trillion dollars by 2050. The invention of COF-999 could supercharge these numbers. It could be easily implemented in existing carbon-capture systems, or scientists could experiment with ways to take advantage of its ability to clean ambient air. “We took a powder of this material, put it in a tube, and we passed Berkeley air—just outdoor air—into the material to see how it would perform … It cleaned the air entirely of CO2,” said Omar Yaghi, a Berkeley chemistry professor who worked on the study. As atmospheric CO2 levels hit record highs, and extreme heat waves, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes increase in frequency, the yellow-powder breakthrough is one example of the creative science needed to counter inaction on rising global emissions.

Ginger Matchett is a program assistant with the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. 

If you have fifteen million dollars to spare, an unused ancestral estate, or even a small plot of land in need of transformation, you too can get in on the hot new trend of rewilding—or the process of rebuilding natural ecosystems on landscapes disrupted by humans. The concept represents a fundamental shift in the way governments, ecologists, and ordinary people view conservation. It focuses on restoring to health native environments—including their balance of plants and animals—rather than on trying to protect scarce undisturbed areas such as wilderness (only 3 percent of the Earth’s land surface is ecologically intact). The idea first took off in North America and has spread like kudzu, including to the estates of the ultra-wealthy. Although rewilding remains a niche solution to various conservation problems, it may be on the verge of an explosion, with major consequences for the global climate. 

Some estimates already put the global total of land available for rewilding at a billion acres, which is roughly half the area of the Australian landmass—and even more is set to become available over the course of this century as a combination of factors reduce pressure for the intensive use of land. Some two-thirds of humanity is projected to live in cities by 2050, and the world’s total population (urban and rural) is expected to peak by the mid-2080s. At the same time, agricultural productivity is increasing, technology and innovation are decoupling food output from land input, and alternative proteins, which are far less land- and carbon-intensive than animal-based proteins, are becoming increasingly popular. 

A 2024 study found that a quarter of land in Europe is suitable for rewilding, with Scandinavian countries, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal at the top of the list. A lot of land is viable for rewilding beyond Europe, too, including in Japan and North America. In the United States alone, around thirty million acres of cropland has been abandoned since the 1980s.  

Rewilding may help the environment by absorbing carbon and reversing biodiversity loss. Recent declines in biodiversity around the world, including a 73 percent decrease in wildlife populations over the last fifty years and one million species on the verge of extinction, are linked to accelerated climate change and the spread of infectious diseases. There could be economic benefits as well. Nature tourism is responsible for $600 billion in revenue globally and twenty-two million jobs; revitalized natural spaces and the reintroduction of large animals into them can help raise those numbers. Restoration and rewilding can also increase farming yields, the availability of water, and global fish populations, while also reducing the degradation of agricultural land. Mangroves, coastal wetlands, and coral reefs can lessen flood risk. Putting large herbivores back into their native areas can lower wildfire risk. 

Just as the potential benefits of rewilding are becoming clearer, so too are its possible costs. Some experts fear that rewilding efforts may, like some net-zero carbon pledges, allow governments and industry to sidestep decarbonization efforts in favor of carbon offsets, which are unregulated and can be reversed. The reintroduction of animals and plants, particularly large predators, can also induce a public backlash, which may harm rewilding and restoration. Restoration of ecosystems might increase the risks of tick- and other vector-borne diseases as well. As the world grows hotter, it could prove difficult to reintroduce some desired species. 

Nevertheless, if the land resources and financial incentives for ecological restoration combine with messaging and public sentiment in favor of individual and community action, rewilding may become a movement capable of restoring wide swathes of land to their original states. In so doing, it might open a new route to address the effects of a changing climate.

John Cookson is the editor of the Atlantic Council’s New Atlanticist.  

Sydney Sherry is an assistant director with the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. 

In 2019, scientists Akira Yoshino, M. Stanley Whittingham, and John B. Goodenough won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their development of the rechargeable, renewable lithium-ion battery. The committee commended the trio for having “laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society.” Since their debut in the 1990s, batteries have become ubiquitous in all kinds of electronics. But there’s something even better on the horizon, and not a moment too soon: quantum batteries. 

These novel batteries store energy by drawing on quantum mechanics (the study of physics on a microscopic scale) and particularly quantum chemistry, which is crucial to battery research and allows scientists to understand the chemical structure and reaction of atoms at significantly quicker speeds than current models. It’s a promising emerging technology to watch amid a broader exploration of alternative battery chemistries that could offer the energy density and stability to perform better than lithium-ion batteries for certain functions. 

One application is medical devices. About 26 percent of the US adult population has some type of disability that requires a medical device—such as cochlear implants or a pacemaker—and these devices rely on lithium-ion, lithium, or lithium-iodine batteries for energy. Supply of such batteries isn’t guaranteed; beginning in 2022, for instance, a lithium-ion battery shortage upended electric-vehicle and medical-device supply chains in the United States. These batteries also often require recharging or a replacement, which can necessitate additional surgeries if the medical device that uses them is implanted.

Since quantum batteries could have higher energy density, quantum devices could provide more efficient and long-lasting performance than lithium-based options, reducing the number of battery exchanges that put patients at risk. The energy stored in quantum batteries also could power medical facilities and electric vehicles, improving emergency services in vulnerable and remote areas—a crucial concern worldwide, as climate change brings stronger storms along with longer and more intense heat waves, which not only raise health risks but also strain power grids. During power outages, most hospitals today rely on fossil-fuel and battery-system generators, which often experience complications. In the future, quantum batteries could power these facilities instead. Additionally, since quantum batteries could accelerate charging times for electric vehicles from the current thirty minutes to seconds at high-speed stations (and from about ten hours to a few minutes at home), electrically powered ambulances and medical devices could be charged and ready to go in seconds—a unit of time that can make all the difference for first responders.  

Tatevik Khachatryan is an assistant director for events at the Atlantic Council.

Picture someone falling for an online hoax. If an elderly internet user came to mind, think again. A recent study from Cambridge University revealed that the generation that grew up with the internet—and that reported in the study spending the most time online—had a hard time telling real headlines from fake ones. 

Though they tend to be tech savvy and certainly are not the only generation vulnerable to inaccurate information, members of Generation Z (those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s) are more susceptible to mis- and disinformation than widely assumed. Often relying on social media as a primary news source, digital natives are vulnerable to manipulation. In the Cambridge study, as well as in research conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, they demonstrated a propensity to believe in conspiracy theories. Gen Z might be conscious of the threat posed by biased feeds and manipulated media, but its members continue to scroll and share—and their amplification of mis- and disinformation will be a serious challenge in the future.

Social media is a central fact of life for the vast majority of Gen Zers in the developed world, and it has become an indispensable informational tool for those in developing countries as well. In 2024, a report surveying nearly 4,500 individuals across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia found that 91 percent of Gen Z social media users are on Instagram and 86 percent are on TikTok. Gen Z is forming judgments based on the content appearing on their social media feeds—often curated by algorithms that privilege content with higher engagement levels regardless of whether it is true or false—and circulating it to their digital communities. Their decisions about who to follow on social media are not necessarily rooted in the authenticity or credibility of those figures. Instead their social media consumption is often parasocial: They tend to follow media streams and engage with the causes of individuals who they don’t know personally, be they influencers or politicians. 

A generation growing up with seemingly unlimited access to information and extensive knowledge about what digital technologies like algorithms do, but with limited ability to verify that information, represents a significant sociological change. As members of Gen Z proceed in their careers and assume more powerful positions, there is a real risk that they have been left ill-prepared to navigate the overwhelming scale of online information ecosystems. The mis- and disinformation surrounding global challenges ranging from war to migration to climate change may also make Gen Zers more mistrustful of both institutions and other individuals, rendering them less capable of addressing these challenges. Collaborative efforts between Gen Z and older generations—engaging private companies, governments, and individuals—are needed to manage a transformed information landscape and prevent subsequent generations from growing up in an era of misinformation or falling for online hoaxes. 

Ginger Matchett is a program assistant with the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. 

Srujan Palkar is a Global India fellow and assistant director with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Global Foresight 2025

In this year’s Global Foresight edition, our experts share findings from our survey of global strategists on how human affairs could unfold over the next decade. Our team of next-generation scholars spot “snow leopards” that could have major unexpected impacts in 2025 and beyond. And our foresight practitioners imagine three different scenarios for the next decade.

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In the fall of 2024 after the outcome of the US presidential election, the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security surveyed the future, asking leading global strategists and foresight practitioners around the world to answer our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next ten years. Here are the full results.

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Atlantic Council foresight experts spot the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsized impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

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In an article published on February 4 by the Russia in Global Affairs journal, Lavrov accused the US of undermining the international order with “cowboy attacks,” and claimed that the rhetoric of the Trump administration was reminiscent of Nazi Germany. “The ‘America First’ concept has disturbing similarities to the ‘Germany Above All’ slogan of the Hitler period,” he wrote.

Such attacks are nothing new, of course. The Kremlin has a long history of branding critics and adversaries as Nazis that can be traced all the way back to the height of the Cold War. When the Hungarians rebelled against Soviet occupation in 1956, Moscow condemned the uprising as a “fascist rebellion” before sending in the tanks. It was a similar story during the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring of 1968. Communist officials even referred to the Berlin Wall itself as “the Anti-Fascist Protective Wall.”

This trend survived the Soviet collapse and has been enthusiastically embraced by the Putin regime. Labeling opponents as Nazis is regarded as a particularly effective tactic in modern Russia as it strikes an emotive chord among audiences raised to revere the staggering Soviet sacrifices in the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

Throughout Putin’s reign, domestic political opponents including Alexei Navalny have been routinely demonized as Nazis. The same strategy is frequently employed in the international arena. When Estonia sought to remove a Soviet World War II monument from Tallinn city center in 2007, the Kremlin media went into a frenzy about “Fascist Estonia,” sparking riots among Estonia’s sizable ethnic Russian population. A long list of other international critics and adversaries have faced the same Nazi slurs.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The most notorious Russian accusations of Nazism have been leveled at Ukraine. Ever since Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, Russian state propaganda has sought to portray Ukrainian national identity as a modern form of fascism that is virtually indistinguishable from Nazism. This propaganda campaign is rooted in Soviet era attempts to discredit Ukraine’s independence movement via association with World War II collaboration. It reached new lows in 2014 as Putin attempted to legitimize the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Donbas region.

Moscow’s efforts to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state escalated further following the onset of the full-scale invasion three years ago, with a massive spike in references to “Nazi Ukraine” throughout the Kremlin-controlled Russian media. In this increasingly unhinged environment, few were surprised when Putin announced that one of his two principle war aims was the “denazification” of Ukraine.

It has since become abundantly clear that Putin’s frequent talk of “denazification” is actually Kremlin code for “deukrainianization.” In other words, the ultimate goal of Russia’s current invasion is to create a Ukraine without Ukrainians, with false accusations of Nazism serving as a convenient excuse to justify the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.

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The history of nationalist politics in independent Ukraine is far removed from the Kremlin’s fascist fantasies. In reality, Ukrainian far-right parties have never come close to holding political power and typically receive far fewer votes than nationalist candidates in most other European countries.

When Ukraine’s frustrated and marginalized nationalists banded together into a single bloc for the country’s last prewar parliamentary election in 2019, they managed to secure a meager 2.16 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Russian-speaking Jewish comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election of the same year served to further highlight the absurdity of Russia’s entire “Nazi Ukraine” narrative.

Ever since Zelenskyy’s election, Russian officials have been tying themselves in knots attempting to explain how a supposedly Nazi state could elect a Jewish leader. In one particularly infamous incident during a spring 2022 interview with Italian TV show Zona Bianca, foreign minister Lavrov responded to questioning about Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage by claiming that Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.”

Lavrov’s latest comments do not signal a significant shift in the Kremlin position toward the United States and should not be blown out of proportion. Nevertheless, it is always worth paying attention when Russia plays the Nazi card. In this instance, the decision to target Trump personally with Nazi slurs by comparing one of his core political messages to Hitler’s propaganda suggests a degree of unease in Moscow over what the Kremlin can expect from the new US administration.

If Trump follows through on his threats to pressure Putin into peace talks, this unease may soon give way to outright hostility. At that point, we can expect to see yet more lurid Russian accusations of Nazism, this time aimed at the United States. That, after all, is how the Kremlin propaganda machine works. Putin claims to venerate the memory of World War II, but he has done more than anyone to distort the legacy of the conflict for his own political gain.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

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Evolution of freedom

Poland, along with the three Baltic states, stands as one of history’s most remarkable examples of how embracing democratic institutions and a free-market economy can radically transform a nation and propel it onto a trajectory of rapid development. Following an unprecedented transition in 1989, Poland and other former communist bloc nations successfully established the three foundational pillars of a free society—rule of law, democracy, and market economy—guided by frameworks like the Freedom Index. Although the Index’s coverage begins only in 1995, when many key reforms were already implemented, Poland’s journey in the subsequent decades offers valuable insights. Notable milestones include its accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004 and, more recently, significant challenges to the rule of law starting in 2015, which is the primary focus of this piece. 

The political shift following the 2015 parliamentary elections serves as an archetype of what might be called a “bad transition.” In such scenarios, authoritarian leaders or parties rise to power through legitimate electoral processes—a necessary but insufficient condition for true democracy—and proceed to systematically erode institutional independence, particularly within the justice system and civil service. The Law and Justice Party (PiS), under Jarosław Kaczyński’s leadership, secured a decisive victory in a fair election but quickly revealed its authoritarian tendencies. The sharp decline in political and legal subindexes from 2016 onward vividly illustrates this regression. 

Among the political subindex components, the most severe deterioration occurred in political rights, driven largely by the PiS’s capture of public media, turning it into a propaganda tool. Fortunately, private media outlets managed to resist government pressure and served as a critical counterbalance. 

However, the most dangerous attack came against the judiciary, as evidenced by the more than thirty-five-point drop in the judicial independence component within the legal subindex. Legislative changes in 2016 merged the roles of prosecutor-general and minister of justice, granting a political appointee sweeping powers over the judicial system, including appointments, promotions, and case allocations to specific prosecutors. This effectively undermined safeguards for prosecutorial independence, which allowed compliant prosecutors to be rewarded and dissenters punished. Judicial independence similarly eroded under politicized appointment processes. 

Poland’s judicial system survived this assault primarily due to the vigorous defense mounted by civil society and advocacy groups. The rulings of the European Court of Justice in 2021 and 2023, alongside political pressure from the European Commission, played a crucial role, but these external interventions would likely have been insufficient without the active involvement of Polish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and grassroots organizations. 

PiS was unsuccessful in undermining the free elections, and those held in 2023 were democratic. The newly elected government has prioritized the restoration of judicial independence, a commitment that has led to the European Commission’s recent decision to terminate the Article 7(1) Treaty on European Union (TEU) procedure, citing that “there is no longer a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in Poland.” 

Turning to the economic subindex, several notable aspects deserve attention. From the early 1990s, the anticipation of eventual EU membership spurred a series of significant liberalizing reforms. Between Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 and 2016, the country benefited from increasing policy credibility and access to the common market for trade and capital, driving a robust convergence process with other EU member states. 

However, during the years of PiS governance, economic freedom suffered, primarily due to increased nationalizations and expansion of the state sector in the economy. Higher fiscal spending and growing budget deficits during this period Evolution of Prosperity further weighed on economic freedom, representing a clear drag on progress in this area. 

Despite these challenges, the economic subindex reflects an overarching positive trajectory, largely attributed to a notable increase in women’s economic opportunities. A rare positive legacy of the socialist era is the strong foundation of gender equality within Polish society, particularly in economic participation. The sharp rise in this indicator in 2010 aligns with the adoption of European regulations promoting equal treatment—standards that were already a widespread practice in Poland. 

Evolution of prosperity

The Polish economy has undergone a remarkable convergence with the EU. In 1990, Poland’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was less than 40 percent of the EU average. Over the past twenty-five years, this gap has significantly narrowed, reaching 83 percent of the EU average by 2023. 

A notable aspect of Poland’s economic performance is its resilience during the 2008 financial crisis, which left no significant negative impact on the country’s economy. As illustrated in Figure 1, Poland’s GDP per capita growth remained consistently positive from 1992 until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, the financial crisis, followed by the debt crisis, had substantial repercussions in neighboring countries such as Estonia and Latvia, not to mention the severe impacts felt in Greece. Consequently, Poland today is wealthier than all these countries, despite having a lower GDP per capita than each of them in 2007. 

Finally, it is worth noting a significant external factor that has boosted the Polish economy in recent years, namely, the absorption of around one million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of the Russian aggression on Ukraine. In 2023, estimates suggested that Ukrainian refugees contributed between 0.7 and 1.1 percent to GDP in Poland.

Figure 1. Real GDP per capita in selected countries

Source: World Bank, GDP per capita, measured in purchasing power parity (PPP), constant 2021 international dollars.

When analyzing the health component, it is evident that persistent challenges remain. Poland’s life expectancy continues to lag behind EU averages, particularly among men, who face a gap of over four years. Lifestyle factors such as high rates of tobacco and alcohol consumption account for much of this disparity. While smoking rates in Poland have declined in parallel with the EU, alcohol consumption has stagnated since 2007, posing an ongoing public health concern. Alcohol consumption is more than three times higher among men. Similarly, 28 percent of Polish men smoke tobacco, compared with only 20 percent of women. 

Figure 2. Life expectancy by gender, EU vs Poland, 1990-2019

Source: World Bank.

The socialist economic system proved to be detrimental not only to consumers but also to the environment. The shift toward market-oriented policies in Poland significantly reduced the volume of emissions required to generate additional income per capita. However, the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy is not yet complete, as coal continues to play an important role in industry and energy generation. EU regulations in this area are expected to drive further change and the adoption of environmentally sustainable policies, though the pace of the reform will be a critical factor. While there is a risk that some of these regulations may be overly severe or implemented too quickly, the general direction of these measures is undeniably positive. 

Turning to the minorities component, it seems clear that the marked decline in this component beginning in 2015 correlates with the rise to power of the PiS government. A detailed analysis of the underlying data confirm this connection. The sharp drop primarily reflects increased discrimination in access to public sector employment and business opportunities based on political The Path Forward affiliation. This decline illustrates the previously mentioned politicization of public institutions, including the prosecution office and public media, among other agencies that should have remained neutral and independent. 

The path forward

Following the turbulent tenure of the previous government, support for democracy and the rule of law has strengthened in Poland. Consequently, there is little reason for concern, in my opinion, about the stability of these institutions in the near future. Instead, the more pressing issue lies in sustaining economic growth. Although Poland has significantly narrowed the income gap with the EU, including Germany, disparities remain, and the country faces several unresolved challenges requiring a new wave of reforms. 

One persistent issue is the incomplete privatization process initiated in the 1990s. The public sector’s share in the economy remains high—one of the largest in Europe. To ensure sustained growth, Poland must pursue privatization and enhance competition in sectors like energy and oil processing. Unfortunately, no major political party has presented a comprehensive strategy for addressing this issue. Nonetheless, a carefully planned privatization initiative is essential for medium- and long-term economic growth. 

Another major challenge is excessive fiscal spending, largely driven by social welfare programs. What is more, this spending is not effectively targeted, as it does not primarily benefit the poorest households. The tax and transfer system has a minimal impact on reducing income inequality. For instance, the “Family 500+” program, introduced by PiS and later expanded by the current government, provides universal child allowances irrespective of income and number of children in a given household. Such unselective transfers are more characteristic of populist policies than measures aimed at addressing inequality. 

Finally, Poland shares demographic challenges with other developed nations, particularly the rapid aging of its population. Without substantial reforms, economic growth is likely to slow further, and fiscal pressures will intensify. Polish civil society has shown remarkable resilience in defending democratic institutions during recent crises. With these threats now neutralized, it is crucial for citizens to channel this energy to pressure the current government to implement essential reforms. These efforts will be vital to ensuring continued prosperity over the coming decade. 

Leszek Balcerowicz is an economist and professor of economics at the Warsaw School of Economics. He served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance in the first non-communist government in Poland after 1989 (1989–91), and again between 1997 and 2000. He was president of the National Bank of Poland from 2001–07. A member of the Washington-based international advisory body Group of Thirty, he is founder and chairman of the Civil Development Forum, a Warsaw-based think tank. 

The author is grateful to Bartłomiej Jabrzyk for assistance in the preparation of this paper. 

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For more context and to make sense of all the competing arguments, we turned to our experts on China and technology. 

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Graham Brookie: The Supreme Court’s decision will shape global tech competition

Shelly Hahn: To China, algorithms are a national interest 

Kenton Thibaut: The US data security problem is bigger than TikTok

Caroline Costello: If you’re interested in protecting civil society, you should be concerned about TikTok

Mark Scott: Worries around TikTok’s data collection and security apply to all social media giants

Matt Geraci: US data privacy laws are not up to the task 

Emerson T. Brooking: If TikTok was a tool of Chinese foreign interference, someone forgot to tell China

Samantha Wong: The national security risks will remain whether TikTok is banned or not

Konstantinos Komaitis: A TikTok ban would be a direct attack on the open and global internet

Kitsch Liao: ByteDance’s First Amendment argument is a distraction from its refusal to divest

The Supreme Court’s decision will shape global tech competition 

The United States Supreme Court is set to start 2025 with a blockbuster case on a tight timeline with significant domestic tech and geopolitical ramifications.  

The law in question in the case of TikTok v. Garland—the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act—was passed by Congress in April 2024 with widespread bipartisan support: a 352–65 vote in the House and 79–18 in the Senate. US President Joe Biden signed the bill into law, giving him the authority to force TikTok’s divestiture from its Chinese parent company or be banned from the United States. The Department of Justice set a deadline of January 19—forcing this dramatic showdown. The Supreme Court will proceed in hearing the case on January 10 despite Trump’s request to delay until after his inauguration and the fact that the high court typically defers to its two co-equal branches of government on matters of national security.  

The Atlantic Council previously published an in-depth technical analysis of whether the threats of legal control, data access, algorithmic tampering, or broad influence efforts by the Chinese government are unique or singularly focused on TikTok. The threat of legal control proved to be real and ongoing. The other potential risks remain considerable with loopholes not specific to TikTok, such as the sheer amount of Americans’ data for sale on the open market or the litany of US-owned platforms the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used to perpetrate influence efforts. Chinese ownership of TikTok is undoubtedly a core strength in its global approach to “discourse power.” The key questions remain whether a Chinese company’s ownership of such a popular social media platform poses unique national security risks to the United States, whether banning such a popular app violates the rights of the company or the app’s US users, and how China may react or force ByteDance to react. Beyond TikTok v. Garland, any outcome will shape global tech competition from the global reach of digital platforms to broader tech governance. If new evidence is surfaced, it will shape both. 

—Graham Brookie is the vice president of technology programs and founding director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council. 

To China, algorithms are a national interest

The TikTok saga highlights Beijing’s strategy of using private companies to exert influence globally, while restricting foreign companies’ operations within China. 

Beijing views algorithms as critical tools to exert national power, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping emphasizing the importance of artificial intelligence in military and economic power competition. As TikTok has gained market clout, the Chinese government has taken a more assertive stance on its technologies, especially content recommendation algorithms. Since 2020, China has implemented measures to protect its technological assets, including adding algorithms to the restricted list  of technologies from export in August 2020, and passing the “Export Control Law” in October 2020, which governs the sale of these technologies to foreign buyers. China now strongly opposes any forced sale of TikTok, asserting its legal authority to veto such transactions. 

Beijing has railed against the United States’ enforcement actions against TikTok, using abusive and inflammatory rhetoric to paint those actions as a violation of international norms. Chinese officials have called these actions “an act of bullying” (Xinhua editorial), “an abuse of national power” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Mao Ning), and “hypocritical and double standards” (Xinhua editorial). They have warned of potential consequences for the global economic order. 

That is interesting rhetoric given that Beijing would not allow a US or other foreign company to operate similarly in China. China maintains a restrictive environment for foreign media and technology companies, blocking most foreign social media platforms, search engines, and news outlets. When probed about this disparity, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson claimed that “China’s policy on overseas social media is completely incomparable to the US’ attitude towards TikTok . . . as long as foreign media companies comply with the requirements of Chinese laws and regulations, all foreign media platforms and news agencies are welcomed.” In reality, these laws give the CCP firm control over data flows and information within its borders. 

Beijing’s robust defense of TikTok and its underlying technology underscores China’s growing confidence in its tech sector and its willingness to challenge what it perceives as unfair treatment in the global marketplace. 

—Shelly Hahn is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. 

The US data security problem is bigger than TikTok 

There is no doubt that People’s Republic of China (PRC) state entities see the value in collecting data on Americans for intelligence purposes. However, the proposed actions on TikTok leave open serious questions on how effectively a ban or divestment would protect Americans’ data from exfiltration.

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab previously conducted a technical, policy, and legal analysis of the stated national security risks posed by TikTok. Our research found that TikTok can be said to present a unique risk in terms of its Chinese ownership, in that the PRC’s National Intelligence Law does give the government broad leeway to potentially compel the company to grant it access to TikTok’s data, including on Americans. In addition, even under the circumstances of outside control of TikTok’s data storage, it would be almost impossible to know if Chinese intelligence authorities somehow maintained a backdoor into these data streams.

At the same time, however, we found that TikTok’s data collection practices on Americans are not outside what is commonly practiced by social media companies, including Meta, X, and others. More importantly, the data that TikTok can provide on Americans pales in comparison to what the Chinese government has accessed through both its illegal hacking activities and what is available legally on the open market through US-based third-party data brokers.  

In fact, a report from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy found that via data brokers, it is “not difficult to obtain sensitive data about active-duty members of the military, their families, and veterans, including non-public, individually identified, and sensitive data, such as health data, financial data, and information about religious practices,” noting that location data was also available for purchase. A narrow, national-security oriented focus on TikTok to address potential threats to the US data ecosystem risks overlooking much broader security vulnerabilities and thus undermines more effective policy solutions. That is to say, while there is much about TikTok’s data gathering and privacy policy to side-eye, the challenge is far wider than TikTok alone and requires a more wide-ranging policy solution to address. 

—Kenton Thibaut is a senior resident China fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council’s Technology Programs. 

If you’re interested in protecting civil society, you should be concerned about TikTok 

The debate surrounding TikTok is about a tool that empowers China to extend its high-tech surveillance state beyond its own borders. While it’s true that other social media platforms engage in similar surveillance, other platforms are not beholden to the government of a foreign adversary. 

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is a Chinese company. In China, the CCP has absolute control over companies. In China’s authoritarian system, the party is always above the law, but the CCP took the extraordinary step of enshrining this capability into law, likely to make very clear to Chinese companies exactly what they should expect. Article 7 of the National Intelligence Law of 2017 states that “all organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts,” meaning the government has the right to secretly demand TikTok user data, and the company must share it. 

When defending against these allegations, TikTok has insisted that it stores all US user data in the United States, but the company has also acknowledged that nevertheless, China-based employees can still access US user data, and those same employees must obey any and all edicts from the CCP. In fact, thanks to leaked audio from internal meetings, we now know that China-based employees have repeatedly done so. This includes two cases in which a China-based team at TikTok planned to use the app to monitor the location of specific US citizens.  

Chinese intelligence services have a well-documented history of harassing and intimidating human rights activists and journalists on US soil. Even if you don’t mind the PRC surveilling you, and even if you don’t care about US-China competition, if you’re interested in protecting civil society, you should be concerned about TikTok. 

There is one important caveat, though. As demonstrated in a report from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, foreign adversaries can also buy this data from brokers that rely on US-based companies surveilling their users. In fact, US-based companies have been accused of using targeted surveillance against civil society, as in the cases of Uber and Meta reportedly tracking the location of journalists reporting on their apps. TikTok is just one piece of a broader data security vulnerability perpetuated by US platforms. 

—Caroline Costello is a program assistant at the Global China Hub. 

Worries around TikTok’s data collection and security apply to all social media giants

Central to concerns around TikTok is how the app collects, stores, and uses information it gathers on users. The fear, according to US officials, is that such data may be weaponized by Beijing, though no evidence of such activity has yet to be proven. Based on a review of TikTok’s privacy policy and external analysis, the social media platform does collect a lot of information on users if they give the company permission. That includes information on individuals’ exact location, their phone numbers and those of their contacts, people’s other social media accounts, and detailed information about individuals’ devices (often used by marketers to target specific demographics). 

That may sound creepy. But TikTok’s data collection practices are no different than those of US social media giants, which similarly gather as much information as possible on their users to tailor these firms’ advertising offerings. That also includes in-app web browsers built into the likes of Instagram and X that allow these companies to collect just as much information on people’s web habits—so long as they are surfing the internet from within these social media networks. 

So would forcing TikTok off of US app stores make Americans’ data more private and secure? The short answer is no. While US officials have raised concerns about how Americans’ data may be accessed by Chinese government officials via TikTok, such personal information—from people’s phone numbers and home addresses to internet activity to consumer purchasing history—is already available commercially, via so-called domestic data brokers. The outgoing Biden administration tried to tackle that problem with the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act and prohibitions placed on these data brokers from transferring such sensitive data to foreign adversaries like China. 

Yet, in reality, the lack of comprehensive federal privacy legislation means that Americans’ data—no matter what eventually happens with the potential TikTok ban or sale—remains significantly more at risk compared to their counterparts in other Western countries. State-based laws, particularly those in California and Virginia, have provided a modest degree of greater control for people in how companies gather and use their personal information. But the removal of TikTok from US app stores, which have similarly set baseline levels of privacy protections for users, will not make Americans’ overall data either more private or more secure. 

 —Mark Scott is senior resident fellow at the Democracy + Tech Initiative within the Atlantic Council Technology Programs. 

US data privacy laws are not up to the task 

The absence of common-sense data privacy laws in the United States created an environment that allowed TikTok to become a security risk. Removing TikTok from app stores will not change this. As a 2022 Consumer Reports investigation revealed, TikTok uses many of the same data harvesting techniques employed by companies like Meta and Google for targeting ads. They also concluded that claims by TikTok and others that data is used solely for advertising cannot be verified by consumers or privacy researchers. 

The Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved unauthorized data collection from millions of Facebook users for targeted political ads, remains fresh in the minds of Americans who are skeptical about the stated reasons for removing TikTok. Although the Federal Trade Commission forced new privacy restrictions on Facebook, the scandal has not led to national legislation like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that could be applied to all companies, including TikTok. Despite this, various US states have endeavored to draft their own laws since the scandal. Yet, companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon often attempt to thwart these efforts through lobbying.  

Regulatory changes are essential to mitigate data security threats from Beijing. However, US tech companies seem to lack enthusiasm for supporting new data protections, and Congress has struggled to make progress. Nearly all the major US tech companies have been fined for violating the European Union’s GDPR (including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Twitter/X), so clearly this is an area that needs improvement. Companies are not ideal self-regulators. TikTok adds another layer given that it must answer to an authoritarian regime and thus poses even larger risks when allowed to operate in an unregulated environment. 

TikTok’s popularity, data collection practices, and Chinese ownership create a unique national security challenge requiring careful consideration. Tech companies should work with the US government to improve data privacy protections, rather than targeting TikTok under the guise of national security while simultaneously perpetuating a harmful regulatory status quo. 

—Matt Geraci is an associate director at the Global China Hub. 

If TikTok was a tool of Chinese foreign interference, someone forgot to tell China 

It’s true that the push for TikTok’s divestment from ByteDance is deeply rooted in fears of Chinese information manipulation. In a March 2024 House Committee on Energy and Commerce report on the forced divestment measure, the committee cited China’s potential use of TikTok to “push misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda on the American public.”  

It’s also true that these fears were never substantiated. The CCP’s propaganda strategy—its quest for “discourse power”—has always been premised on the incremental manipulation of information across many different platforms at the same time. The idea that Beijing built a shiny red button to turn TikTok into a tool of mass brainwashing never accorded with reality.  

Indeed, so far it appears that only a single fake CCP-adjacent TikTok account sought to influence the 2024 US election. Ironically, far more CCP accounts on other platforms sought to stir resentment about a potential TikTok ban. By contrast, Russia—which has had no unique claim to TikTok—extensively used the service for the purposes of information manipulation. In December 2023, the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the BBC uncovered a massive Russian campaign that used artificial intelligence to instrumentalize more than 12,800 accounts to undermine Ukraine.  

Perhaps the CCP was just subtly tweaking the TikTok algorithm to achieve its goals? But this is also unlikely. One of the few available independent studies of TikTok content policy suggests that the platform may have actually reduced the salience of certain hashtags in line with the wishes of US lawmakers. The bizarre nature of some of the material that goes viral on TikTok is explained by the tastes of TikTok’s Millennial- and Gen Z-majority user base, not a global conspiracy. TikTok has repeatedly failed the American people in the realm of transparency and public accountability. So has every US-based social media platform.  

—Emerson T. Brooking is director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab. 

The national security risks will remain whether TikTok is banned or not 

Last February, Biden issued a much-needed executive order limiting the sale of sensitive personal US data or US government-related data to “countries of concern,” including China, to prevent them from “engag[ing] in espionage, influence, kinetic or cyber operations or to identify other potential strategic advantage over the United States.” This is supported by additional legislation, such as the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 and the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, both aimed at protecting sensitive US data from being accessed by “foreign adversary nations.” 

However, these new measures are not foolproof. The executive order only targets data brokers from “countries of concern,” and the bill doesn’t address data. One way China can easily circumvent these laws is by purchasing data from companies in third-party countries that obtained it through domestic data brokers that sold the data without knowledge of the final recipient or its intended use. Essentially, if TikTok was a US company, China would still be able to purchase personal US data from TikTok through third-country entities.  

Furthermore, China could easily access any sensitive, critical data through hacking US infrastructure. China is constantly investing and building up its offensive cyber ecosystem to train Chinese hackers to target and acquire critical US intelligence. Although the ban on TikTok would prevent Chinese firms from easily accessing US data, China has the resources to access this sensitive information illegally and is not afraid to implement these illicit operations if it feels the need to do so.  

Ultimately, the TikTok ban addresses only a small aspect of a much larger issue. Even if TikTok were banned or became a US-owned company, the core national security risks would remain. The United States should instead implement broader legislation aimed at strengthening domestic cybersecurity infrastructure and closing any third-party loopholes that could undermine existing protective laws. 

—Samantha Wong is a program assistant with the Global China Hub. 

A TikTok ban would be a direct attack on the open and global internet

In the conversation about whether the United States should or should not ban TikTok, there is one parameter that no one is mentioning: what will this mean for the internet? The answer is straightforward. If the United States proceeds with banning TikTok, such a move will be nothing short of a direct attack on the open and global internet.  

The internet is based on a decentralized architecture, which means that there is no center of control. The value of the open internet is that networks should be able to connect without any restrictions. The internet was not designed so that only specific networks could connect; rather, any network should be able to connect as long as it is willing to abide by certain rules—the internet’s open standards and protocols. Banning TikTok will affect how networks get to interconnect. 

 At the same time, a potential ban will also affect the internet’s global reach and integrity. The whole idea of the internet is that no entity should inspect or modify packets carried through different networks beyond what might be necessary to route the packet as advertised. This is an expectation that users have no matter where they are in the world, and it will not be met should the ban take effect.  

The United States has historically and unequivocally been a strong supporter of the open and global internet. In fact, for more than two decades, the United States has been at the forefront of pushing back at attempts by authoritarian governments to centralize internet control. A TikTok ban will be a setback to all these years of effort and will legitimize the narrative by other authoritarian states that the internet should be subject to government control and management. It will also weaken the United States’ position globally, especially at the United Nations, where conversations about the future of internet governance are currently taking place. 

 —Konstantinos Komaitis is a resident senior fellow and Global Democracy and Technology lead with the Democracy + Tech Initiative. 

ByteDance’s First Amendment argument is a distraction from its refusal to divest

ByteDance has yet to provide a rationale commensurate with freedom of speech or national security regarding why TikTok cannot be a US company without ties to the Chinese Communist party-state. Yet, on January 10, the nation will focus on the US Supreme Court’s hearing for the “TikTok ban,” highlighting First Amendment concerns. 

This is a distraction. The government has already successfully argued in court against TikTok on both national security and data collection grounds. ByteDance has sidestepped the national security argument by pointing to the lack of public evidence and argued that TikTok’s data collection practices are the same as those of other platforms. TikTok, however, failed to argue against its intent to endanger US national security, and it’s a point that bears reiterating.  

A series of reports from 2019 to 2021 detailed TikTok’s extreme security risks, including that the app allowed remote downloading and execution of binary files, essentially acting like a pre-installed backdoor ready for payload delivery. This sets it apart from other social media platforms and established its intent to harm. A “black hat” hacker would usually have to compromise a target’s devices through phishing or other means before it can achieve what TikTok pre-installed for its users. A Washington, DC court ruling also stressed TikTok’s continued malicious intent to abuse data collected from US citizens, even after the establishment of TikTok US Data Security.   

Until TikTok’s cord with the PRC is cut, it will continue to test the waters and find legal and illegal means to endanger US national security, as it clearly possesses both the intent and capability to do so.  

The essence of security is to make it harder for an adversary to do you harm. Just because China can obtain US user data through other ways doesn’t mean we should let them do so through TikTok. Deterrence through cost imposition is a foundational concept in international security, and the “cost,” be it through financial means or legal risks should China decide to furnish data through other social media giants operating within the United States, is very real. 

—Kitsch Liao is an associate director at the Global China Hub. 

The post Your expert guide to the debate over banning TikTok  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“These are people without any beliefs, godless people. They’re ethnic Jews, but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so,” Putin stated during the flagship event, which is broadcast live on Russian state television and traditionally runs for hours. “These are people without kin or memory, with no roots. They don’t cherish what we cherish and what the majority of the Ukrainian people cherish as well.”

Putin’s comments came as the Ukrainian authorities seek to limit the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which is seen as closely tied to the Kremlin. Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill has emerged since 2022 as an outspoken supporter of the invasion, which he has sought to defend on spiritual grounds. His backing for the war has shocked many and sparked international criticism, with Pope Francis warning him not to become “Putin’s altar boy.”

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Many commentators have noted the similarity between Putin’s recent attack on people “with no roots” and Stalin’s earlier Soviet era persecution of Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans.” The Kremlin leader’s comments also offered alarming echoes of Russia’s most notorious antisemitic fake, the early twentieth century Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world by infiltrating and destroying Western institutions.

Putin and his Kremlin colleagues have faced multiple accusations of antisemitism since 2022 as they have sought to defend Moscow’s claims to be “denazifying” Ukraine despite the country’s popularly-elected Jewish president and its role as a prominent destination for Jewish pilgrimages. This toxic trend has included frequent attacks on Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage. “I have a lot of Jewish friends,” Putin stated in June 2023. “They say that Zelenskyy is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people. I’m not joking.”

Following these comments, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum accused the Russian leader of repeatedly employing “antisemitic lies” to justify the invasion of Ukraine. US officials have been similarly critical. “President Zelenskyy’s Jewishness has nothing to do with the situation in Ukraine and Putin’s continued focus on this topic and “denazification” narrative is clearly intended to distract from Russia’s war of aggression against the Ukrainian people,” commented US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt in 2023.

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Similar slurs feature regularly in the Kremlin-controlled Russian state media, with leading propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov known for questioning the authenticity of Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity. Meanwhile, during the initial months of the invasion in spring 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to a question about the absurdity of “denazifying” a country with a Jewish leader by claiming that Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.” Lavrov’s remarks sparked outrage and were branded “unforgivable” by Israeli officials.

Many within the Jewish community see Putin’s most recent inflammatory comments as part of a broader trend that is legitimizing antisemitic tropes and raising serious safety concerns. “This is just one example of his regime’s explicit and virulent antisemitism, which has intensified following his 2022 invasion of Ukraine,” commented Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis and former Chief Rabbi of Moscow, who fled Russia following the attack on Ukraine after coming under pressure to publicly endorse the invasion. In December 2022, Goldschmidt warned of rising antisemitism in Putin’s Russia and advised Jews to leave the country.

Goldschmidt is now appealing to the international community to address the antisemitic rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin. “As a representative of Jewish communities across Europe, and someone who was forced to flee my home and community in Moscow, I call on Europe and the free world to unequivocally condemn President Putin’s dangerous propaganda before it spreads further,” he stated.

Joshua Stein is a researcher with a PhD from the University of Calgary.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 18, 2024

Imposing neutrality on Ukraine will not stop Putin or bring peace to Europe

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Imposing neutrality on Ukraine will not bring about a durable peace in Europe. On the contrary, it would leave Ukraine at Putin’s mercy and set the stage for a new Russian invasion, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

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Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has thrust the country into the global spotlight and transformed international perceptions of Ukraine in ways that will resonate for decades to come, writes Peter Dickinson.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Putin faces antisemitism accusations following attack on ‘ethnic Jews’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This shameless shift in the Kremlin narrative is hardly surprising. After all, Putin is desperate to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers that will allow him to retain control over naval and air bases that are vital for Russian interests throughout Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the significance of Russia’s dramatic change of tune cannot be overstated.

Russia’s Syrian intervention was the country’s first major military operation beyond the boundaries of the former USSR since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did not come cheaply, with Putin investing tens of billions of dollars on a mixed force of military advisers, mercenary units, naval assets, and air power tasked with propping up the Syrian regime. For a long period, the gamble appeared to have paid off handsomely. Putin was widely recognized as the savior of Bashar Assad, and was able to use this newfound prestige to project Russian influence throughout the wider region.

Russia’s Syrian exploits were afforded blanket coverage throughout the country’s carefully curated information space. The Kremlin media spent much of the past decade trumpeting the war in Syria as a symbol of Russia’s return to Great Power status, with Moscow pundits routinely positioning the country’s military campaign as a righteous crusade against Western intrigues and Islamist forces of darkness. There have been endless documentaries, propaganda tours, and even a classical concert amid the rubble of a country devastated by Russian aerial bombardment. All this is now seemingly forgotten as the Kremlin seeks to ingratiate itself with the new powers that be in Damascus.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Putin’s readiness to surrender his entire propaganda position in Syria and quietly accept new military realities should now help the West to overcome its crippling fear of Russian escalation in Ukraine. Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began almost three years ago, the Western response has been hampered by concerns that support for Ukraine could provoke Russia into escalating its aggression and lead to a broadening of the conflict. Putin has skillfully exploited these fears, using a combination of nuclear threats and warnings of Russian red lines to limit the delivery of Western military aid to Kyiv and impose absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

This excessive Western caution has infuriated many in Kyiv, not least because Ukraine has repeatedly exposed Russia’s threats as empty. When Putin threatened to defend his Ukrainian conquests with nuclear weapons in September 2022 and declared “I’m not bluffing,” Ukraine promptly called his bluff and liberated the strategically vital southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Instead of reaching for his nuclear briefcase, Putin simply ordered his defeated troops to retreat across the Dnipro River. Likewise, when Ukraine disregarded Kremlin bluster and proceeded to sink or damage around one-third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, Putin did not go nuclear. On the contrary, he instructed his remaining warships to withdraw from Russian-occupied Crimea to the relative safety of Russian ports.

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The biggest blow to the myth of inevitable Russian escalation came in summer 2024, when Ukraine crossed the reddest of all Russian red lines by invading Russia itself. As Ukrainian troops flooded across the border and began occupying swathes of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Putin’s response was telling. He made no attempt to rally his compatriots against the foreign invader or warn of impending nuclear war. Quite the opposite, in fact. Rather than raising the stakes, Putin consciously chose to downplay the entire Ukrainian offensive, referring to it as a mere “provocation.”

Putin’s underwhelming response to the fall of his Syrian ally Bashar Assad serves as a timely reminder that Western fears of Russian escalation are wildly exaggerated. In reality, whenever Putin finds himself confronted by a resolute opponent, he is inclined to retreat. Like all bullies, he seeks to overwhelm his victims with intimidation. However, as we have seen repeatedly in Ukraine, his threats are almost always hollow.

This is good news for advocates of a “peace through strength” strategy, including those within the incoming Trump administration. Putin’s ability to intimidate the West has been his greatest success of the entire war in Ukraine, but it should now be abundantly clear that Russia’s saber-rattling is built on bluff.

The Kremlin’s inability to rescue its Syrian ally has revealed the humble reality behind Putin’s Great Power posturing. The Russian military is now obviously overextended by the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, while Putin is in a far weaker position than he would like us to believe. Crucially, he is also more than capable of completely rejecting his own propaganda and rewriting history when necessary. If confronted with the prospect of military defeat in Ukraine, there is every reason to believe he will retreat again, while ordering his media machine to save his blushes.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 18, 2024

Imposing neutrality on Ukraine will not stop Putin or bring peace to Europe

By Mykola Bielieskov

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Vladimir Putin’s poisonous obsession with Ukraine first began to take root 20 years ago when millions of Ukrainians directly defied him during the Orange Revolution, writes Peter Dickinson.

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Some believe the Finlandization of Ukraine is the most realistic option to end Russia’s invasion, but any attempt to impose neutrality would leave Ukraine in a precarious position, writes Minna Ålander.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Putin’s quiet Syrian surrender reveals the weakness behind his intimidation tactics appeared first on Atlantic Council.

• Introduction
• The war and the Putin consensus
• The demographics of war support
• Information access
• The new normal
• Challenging the status quo
• Can one trust the Russian polls?
• The joke is on us
• Acknowledgements
• About the author

Russian president Vladimir Putin has been in power for a quarter of a century. During his tenure, Russia has actively participated in five wars. But not even Putin’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has been able to shake Russian society’s consolidation around the Kremlin, the so-called “Putin consensus” (i.e., Putin’s consistently high support among the majority of the Russian public). This report aims to dig into the origin of this phenomenon.

The war and the Putin consensus

Over the last two years, in surveys run through various modes and by several polling organizations, support for Russia’s war among the Russian public has remained fairly stable. Based on face-to-face surveys by the Levada Center and phone surveys by Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) and the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), war support fluctuated between 70–75 percent (with about 20 percent of respondents consistently opposing the war). Online polls by Russia Watchers show similar results. According to phone surveys by Russian Field and ExtremeScan, support has fluctuated between 60–70 percent (the differences in numbers might be due to the framing of the question). While a consistent level of approval continues, Russians disagree about specific war aims: none of the official reasons (such as Ukraine’s “denazification,” by which the Kremlin means regime change in Kyiv) typically reach majority support in surveys.

The demographics of war support

After February 2022, Putin’s approval rating increased by double digits. This notable spike, a “rally around the flag,” follows a pattern observed during previous Kremlin-led wars. The specific size of this effect has varied from one conflict to another. As one study estimated, the boost is usually smaller in magnitude for smaller conflicts, but major international crises were followed by increases in approval rating of more than 10 percentage points.

War often inflates the approval not only of the president, but of various political institutions such as the government, parliament, governors, the army, patriotism, and pride in Russia. Beyond political institutions, the rally-around-the-flag effect often boosts other indicators of perceived societal wellbeing and overall optimism about Russia’s direction. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine proved no exception to this pattern, even if the popular consolidation was somewhat weaker than it was in 2014. Right after the invasion, public optimism and pride soared. They have remained high, as evidenced by the finding that average Russians are now significantly more likely to believe their country is headed in the right direction. Furthermore, views of Russia’s economic, social, and political priorities shifted toward a siege mentality with a sense of grievance vis-à-vis the West.

What explains the rallying effect at the onset of the conflicts Russia initiates? Russian respondents are often categorized into several groups.

The separate but related “loyalist” (war supporters who express their beliefs with less intensity) and “uncertain” (those with average support for the war who are unsure whether Russia is moving in the right direction) groups—36–49 percent and 11–14 percent of the Open Minds Institute (OMI) sample, respectively—agree with the war in principle but in moderation. They are the groups most conformist with higher levels of authoritarian obedience. In Levada polls, a chunk of respondents (42 percent) broadly corresponding to this group has consistently supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine, albeit for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons. For example, they tend to claim that Russia should “win anyways” and “finish what we started.” Such participants often describe the war as defensive, inevitable, or the result of the threat of NATO expansion. In polls, individuals in this group, while supporting the war, also typically want it to end soon.

Historically, these groups are foreign policy moderates. For years they have made up the core of Putin’s support, believing through the end of 2021 that Putin was not a hardliner vis-à-vis the West. These conformist groups are also more susceptible to propagandist narratives due to their lack of strong preformed opinions. While they do not necessarily trust the authorities on day-to-day matters and economic issues, they often delegate foreign policy decisions to the Kremlin. They also tend to believe it’s their duty to follow what the state considers morally correct, and even to sacralize the state allegedly waging a “defensive” and “liberation” war against an enemy “attacking their homeland.”

Accordingly, the Kremlin easily convinced these groups of the need for another foreign adventure. When asked whether the war against Ukraine should continue, they tend to shift back and forth on the topic, parroting what they believe to be the Kremlin’s intentions at the moment. The conformist groups display no distinct gender or age characteristics. They are usually less interested in politics, and they are more likely to switch back and forth between media channels depending on fluctuations in the news cycle.

The “hawks” (13–15 percent of the OMI sample, 18–22 percent of Levada’s samples, and 27 percent of the Russian Field data) are the most ideological group, firmly supporting the war against Ukraine and sharing a strong sense of national identification with Russia. They typically believe that a ceasefire in Ukraine is unacceptable until Russia “destroys and eradicates fascism and Nazism.” Pro-war groups are more likely to be male: 53 percent of men “completely” or “rather” support the war, while only 36 percent of women do. Age is another factor in respondents’ support for the war. In the OMI polls, 58 percent of those aged 45–60 expressed support, as opposed to only 29 percent of 18–30-year-old respondents. In their study, Maria Snegovaya, Peter Pomerantsev, and Graeme Robertson also singled out a significant share of respondents that identifies with Russia, supports militaristic action more strongly, and is more nostalgic for Soviet times than the rest of the sample.

Hawkish groups are also more likely to reside in rural areas or small towns, and to rely on TV as their main source of information. They are usually less educated, have higher income levels, and are mostly satisfied with their financial situation. Better-off respondents are more likely to support the war because of the idiosyncrasy of the Russian middle class, which includes many members of the security services and state and public-sector employees, all of whom are more likely to take pro-Kremlin stances.

War opponents made up 22–30 percent of the OMI sample and 34 percent of the Russian Field data. Since February 2022, war opposition in Russia has remained at roughly steady levels of about 19–20 percent, and about one-fifth of respondents have consistently supported peace negotiations in the last 2.5 years. In today’s Russia, these groups find themselves in an unenviable position, experiencing fear, shame, depression, horror, uncertainty, and despair. However, consistent pro-Western liberals constitute less than half of this group, and they are only about 7 percent of the total sample. War opponents are more likely to have lower levels of income and to be worried that the so-called special military operation will worsen their financial situation. They are younger, are more likely to reside in big cities, and primarily rely on information sources other than TV. In polls, the share of respondents who primarily rely on more independent media sources (YouTube, Telegram channels, or social networks) closely corresponds to the share of war opponents (about 18 percent). As sociologist Mikhail Sokolov put it: “If you are younger than 30, live in a big city, have a higher education and do not watch television, the probability that you will not support the actions of the Russian army exceeds 80%.”

For a while, scholars believed that the Russian youth would become one of the most opposition-minded groups in Russian society. However, as they mature, younger Russians tend to become more conformist, adapting to the political mainstream. Prior to the 2022 war, polls and focus group interviews revealed that Russians were extremely homogeneous on Ukraine-related issues. Both older and younger respondents, and internet and TV watchers, were unusually united in blaming “the West for the current escalation of the conflict.” In the post-2022 period, Kremlin-led indoctrination, which was particularly strong at the school and university levels, further reinforced this trend. Over time, according to polling data, the Russian youth has become more pro-Kremlin, more patriotic, and more pro-war. Hence, it is more accurate to speak of a generational continuum instead of a generational gap. Younger people still support the war in high numbers, though their support is lower than that of the older generation: 75–80 percent of people fifty-five and older support the Russian army’s actions in Ukraine, while 61 percent of young respondents in Levada polls share this sentiment.

Information access

A common misconception about Russian public opinion has to do with the alleged lack of information available to ordinary Russians. While there is a strong correlation between reliance on state TV channels and war support, Russians also have access to alternative information. In the last decade, they have become far less reliant on state-controlled TV channels, a sharp drop from about 90-percent reliance to slightly above 60 percent between 2013 and 2021, as Russians switched to social media and YouTube. More than 85 percent of Russians now have internet access. Popular social apps have nearly 60 million users in a country of 145 million people. Even after the Kremlin increased censorship, independent channels such as YouTube and Telegram still exist, as do virtual private networks (VPNs) and other ways to circumvent the limitations.

Yet, in the post-invasion period, state-controlled TV channels preserved their grip on the Russian public’s hearts and minds, effectively creating an alternative reality for many. Even on the internet, Russians tend to seek out information that is closer to their views. They often find such information in the so-called Z channels (run by pro-war bloggers), whose popularity skyrocketed since the start of the 2022 war, and other pro-Kremlin channels. For example, in the first few months since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, TikTok posts uploaded with the pro-war hashtags #zнаши (“Z-ours”) and #мненестыдно (“I’m not ashamed”) collected more than 2 billion views, and posts promoting the Wagner private military company (PMC) collected another billion. On the Russian-language internet, pro-Kremlin sources have surpassed exiled liberal voices in popularity by at least one order of magnitude.

While many Russians have access to true information about what happens in Ukraine, they often choose to avoid facts that challenge their propaganda-crafted preexisting beliefs. Even when such information was offered by their blood relatives, Russians commonly denied and refused to believe the facts, claiming that this evidence was fake. This is likely explained by Russians trying to avoid cognitive dissonance, the mental discomfort people experience when encountering facts challenging their preexisting beliefs. Conversely, many Russians are used to experiencing good feelings when Russia invades other countries. For most of the post-Soviet period, the Kremlin has waged wars of varying intensity, and periodic rallying around the flag has often triggered the sense of belonging to a great country. Indeed, the narratives the Kremlin promoted at the outset of its wars repeatedly boosted the perceptions of collective unity and allowed many Russians to derive their sense of worth from belonging to a large and strong state. For example, in the post-Crimea period, polls recorded that respondents’ own self-respect spiked from 27 percent in July 2012 to 45 percent in August 2014. Why learn the unpleasant truth when propaganda offers a much more satisfying, glorious, and convenient version of reality?

It appears that state-promoted narratives are more consequential for the conformist groups. The loyalists and the uncertain groups, which constitute the majority within the Russian population, are more likely to shift their support back and forth depending on the Kremlin’s view of the war at a given moment. In contrast, the more ideological hawks are less likely to support Putin during peaceful periods, believing he is too weak vis-à-vis the West. But during periods of escalation against the West, the hawks tend to join Putin’s coalition and unite with the more conformist core support groups. This might explain Putin’s popularity spike at the start of the war.

The new normal

While the previous wars Putin started were relatively painless for Russians, the 2022 war—with half a million casualties, immense economic costs, and the largest occupation of Russian territory in seventy-five years—would seem likely to break the aforementioned pattern. In the past, Russians appeared to be more perceptive about the costs of war; during the Second Chechen War, the public was more sensitive than it is now to casualties among its own soldiers and alarmed at the economic costs. And yet, while several events in the past 2.5 years have somewhat challenged the Putin consensus, after a short period of increased anxiety and support for peace talks, support for the war and Putin’s concurrent approval rating bounced back every time.

The introduction of sanctions was the earliest shock at the onset of the war. Under new conditions of uncertainty, many Russians postponed expensive purchases, as captured by the index of large-purchase expediency. However, the index subsequently recovered and kept growing until it reached its peak in June 2023. That is, adaptation to the economic shock happened within a few months, with few respondents experiencing any notable deterioration of their economic situations.

The announcement of partial mobilization in September 2022 led to a sudden and radical spike in anxiety levels, increased attention to the war, a decrease in Putin’s approval, and a decrease in war support, while support for peace talks temporarily increased to its highest number since the war started. The share of those who felt “tension, irritation, fear and melancholy” increased from 21 percent to 47 percent, the sharpest one-time change in public mood since the start of such observations in the early 1990s. A few protests by the wives and mothers of the mobilized took place outside major cities, primarily in republics that were more affected by mobilization. By the end of September, however, Russian society had generally come to terms with these changes. Protests subsided and the public mood returned to “pre-mobilization” levels by the end of 2022.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny attempt on June 23–24, 2023, also led to increased anxiety levels, with about one-third of respondents feeling anxious and depressed. However, public opinion soon returned to normal as, to many Russians, Putin appeared to have responded well by promptly condemning and cracking down on the rebels.

Most recently, Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, which started in early August 2024, has created a similar dynamic. Anxiety levels jumped from 33 percent to 49 percent between late July and early September, negative sentiment increased, and the share of respondents who thought things in Russia were headed in the right direction decreased. However, this time Putin’s approval declined only slightly—by 2 percentage points (no statistical significance)—and the percentage of peace supporters did not increase, instead dropping from 58 percent to 50 percent.

Altogether, negative war developments typically increase anxiety levels and support for peace talks, while dragging down the approval for the Russian army and the president, probably due to some respondents in the conformist groups temporarily distancing themselves from the Kremlin. However, the effects are usually short in duration and the ratings bounce back after several weeks.

Since 2022, about half of Russians have consistently supported peace negotiations. But even those respondents embracing peace talks support them only with the condition that Russia retains its recent territorial gains in Ukraine. They are unwilling to accept Russia’s strategic defeat. In recent months, some pollsters have noticed a slight increase of 7–8 percentage points more people in support of peace talks. Some believe this trend might indicate war fatigue spreading within Russian society. However, the pattern is not consistent across various studies.

To most Russians, things continue as usual, with many barely noticing any changes in their lives. They seem to be finding ways to accept the unprecedented developments even if they did not originally support or anticipate the war—as long as those developments do not concern them personally (a pattern that mobilization temporarily undermined). It is telling that many Kursk residents claimed in surveys that the war started only after Ukraine’s incursion in August 2024. The appearance of normalcy is partly due to the regime’s active propaganda efforts. Pro-Kremlin channels offer a reassuring picture that “everything is going according to plan, everything is as it should be, and we will win.” Thus, the propaganda has tried to portray the highly unpopular mobilization as a small nuisance and the chances of an average Russian being mobilized as slim. It also hides the true numbers of war casualties and avoids publicizing the unprecedented growth of military expenditures. As long as the war remains a cinematographic picture on TV screens, the Russian public tries to ignore it against all odds.

Challenging the status quo

Recent years have exposed fallacies in many analytical constructions about Russia, and expectations of Russia’s ability to easily shed its authoritarian legacies turned out to be somewhat naïve. How did so many get it so wrong?

One problem is that, for too long, optimists tended to overfocus on trends. While trends matter, the sheer size of the effect ultimately determines the political outcome. Many observers also tended to underestimate the legacy of formal and informal institutions inherited from Russia’s authoritarian past that continued to condition the public’s beliefs and behavior—such as attitudes toward the wars launched by the Kremlin—more than previously understood.

While noticing encouraging modernization trends among younger Russians, observers often missed the limited size of this age group. In the 2019 census, Russians aged 15–29 constituted only 16.5 percent of the population because relatively few children were born between 1989 and 2003. Despite their small number vis-à-vis the rest of the population and their tendency toward political apathy, the regime scaled up its indoctrination efforts toward young Russians in the last decade and appears to have successfully coopted many into its support base. Since 2022, a majority of younger Russians have consistently supported the war.

Similarly, observers have consistently ignored the size of Russia’s liberal pro-Western segment (less than 7 percent of polling samples). A recent German study has estimated the total audience of Russian-language independent media at around 6.7–9.6 million unique users, including 5.4–7.8 million inside Russia. A joint study by Levada and Spektr found that about 7 percent of Russian respondents have relied on independent media, such as Meduza, Novaya Gazeta, Deutsche Welle, etc. Another study asked respondents about YouTube channels they rely on for news about military operations. It discovered that among 1,600 respondents in Russia, the only liberal outlet receiving double-digit mentions was TV Rain, which was named only ten times. Altogether, Russian liberals appear to have failed to make a decisive imprint on Russian society, or even to resist the wave of repression unleashed by the Kremlin since mid-2020. The Kremlin’s brutal crackdown on Russia’s small liberal community, including its multiple attempts to murder opposition leader Alexey Navalny, encountered little pushback from Russian society short of several protests in Russia’s major cities. That was the abrupt end of a decades-long effort to nurture Russian civic groups.

Nor did the simple deterioration in the quality of life brought about by sanctions provoke a level of discontent strong enough to undermine the regime or the prosecution of the war. While research shows that economically worse-off respondents tend to decrease their war support, Russians also proved remarkably resilient to war casualties, which have now exceeded half a million. Invoking comparative cases like the Afghanistan war that helped bring down the Soviet Union, it appears now that only a perfect storm of military losses and economic collapse could cause major public-opinion reversal. As Levada Center sociologist Alexey Levinson points out, the first step in this process would be for the public to embrace the attitude of “screw it all!” But such mass despair appears unlikely in the near future. Instead, economic optimism has been on the rise. As long as Russian society views the war costs as acceptable, the pro-war status quo can be maintained.

Even in the event of an economic crisis in Russia, the decline in war support might not be as radical or pronounced as many hope. The Kremlin has proved remarkably successful at feeding Russians an alternative reality that is too pleasant and addictive for them to abandon. The goal of the analytical community should be to work on strategies designed to help Russians overcome their cognitive dissonance, force them out of denial, and make them challenge their own beliefs.

Can one trust the Russian polls?

After the war started, some observers criticized the reliability of Russian polls. However, most criticism of the polls comes from exiled Russian opposition figures who have their own agenda, or from journalists and experts who do not have experience working with the polling data in their research. The below section addresses most of the frequently raised concerns regarding the reliability of Russian polling data.

Types of polls

Critics claim that intensifying repressions in Russia and multiplying legal restrictions have made it hard to rely on polling evidence. As the argument goes, many Russians today have strong incentives to misrepresent their actual beliefs to avoid state persecution. Indeed, one should be careful interpreting polls in authoritarian contexts given the possible repercussions of disagreeing with official narratives.

However, as the above section demonstrated, most polls—regardless of pollster or mode (online, phone, face to face)—show comparable results. The majority of Russians support the war. One would expect more pronounced discrepancies between, say, online and face-to-face polling results if there was a systematic misrepresentation on behalf of a sizeable share of respondents.

Sample composition

If respondents are increasingly reluctant to talk to pollsters, this should be reflected in changing sample compositions (i.e., how well a sample represents various groups across society). But since the start of the 2022 war, no convincing evidence of this has emerged. Non-sensitive demographic indicators (from prevalence of wearing corrective eyewear to marital status) have generally remained in line with official statistics. Since the start of the war, polls have continued to quite accurately represent the socio-demographic structure of the Russian population. The only exception is a tiny decline in the share of young people willing to participate in surveys since the onset of mobilization. But such fluctuations in the sample structure are too marginal to significantly affect response distribution.

The emigration of many Russians with anti-war and pro-Western attitudes, which followed the start of the war, might have also affected survey composition. But the number of emigrants, estimated between 800,000 and 1 million, is small relative to the rest of the population. Accordingly, the emigration-related change is likely negligible from the sample-composition viewpoint.

Response rates

Poll critics often argue that response rates in Russia are too low to ensure that the samples reliably represent Russian society. In face-to-face surveys, for example, only about one-third or fewer of contacted respondents typically talk to pollsters. Can one trust Russian polls with such seemingly low response rates?

First, Russian response rates are not unusual. In fact, they are comparable to the response rate in surveys run by American National Elections Studies—the gold standard for survey research on US politics—and are often higher than in most US opinion surveys. Second, if Russian respondents hide their true preferences, they should be reluctant to talk to pollsters. Response rates in Russia have historically varied considerably depending on the specific pollster and method. But when those sources of variation are kept constant, most pollsters’ response rates have not changed much since the start of the war.

Interrupted interviews

Is it also possible that respondents agree to be interviewed but abruptly end a conversation when asked sensitive questions?

Once having agreed to an interview, most respondents tend to complete the survey. The number of interrupted interviews did not change much since the start of the war, and interviews are rarely interrupted specifically when sensitive Ukraine-related questions are asked. In addition, the respondents who typically cut interviews short or give “don’t know” answers are not regime opponents; rather, they are less interested in politics altogether. When pressed, they are more likely to parrot official narratives.

The average length of interviews also did not change much since 2022. For example, according to data from Morning Consult, the average interview length for its monthly tracker in Russia has remained relatively stable since November 2021 at around twenty-five minutes. Lastly, related indicators—such as the numbers of “don’t knows,” “no opinions,” and refusals to answer—have not varied much from various pollsters’ data.

Sensitivity bias

To look for evidence of preference falsification (i.e., respondents misrepresenting their beliefs), scholars have used list experiments that allow respondents to indirectly report their preferences and to avoid expressing their opinions directly.

Such approaches have discovered a small difference between direct and indirect responses in Russia. A study by Philipp Chapkovski and Max Schaub, using an online list experiment, discovered that direct questioning artificially inflated war support among Russians by about 10 percentage points (from 61 percent to 71 percent). Another study found similar evidence of preference falsification in war support, at less than 6 percentage points. Timothy Frye, Henry Hale, Ora John Reuter, and Bryn Rosenfeld found no evidence of artificial deflation from the design of their list experiment. However, they also found that the opposition to the war might be a few percentage points higher than opinion polls suggest. Altogether, to the extent that preference falsification exists, it is likely to be less than 10 percent of the overall sample, at 6–10 percentage points.

Historical trends

Lastly, do the post-invasion public-opinion polls tell something completely different from the evidence collected before the 2022 war started?

Juxtaposing the pre-full-scale invasion polls with those collected from 2022 onward, the results generally align. For example, a survey experiment conducted in February 2021 found that even a vaguely described security threat from a neighboring country significantly increased public support for military intervention from an estimated 8 percent to 40 percent (and to 48 percent if the survey attributed the statement to Putin). Polls conducted in late 2021 and in the early 2022 pre-invasion period discovered that three-quarters of respondents were willing to back the Kremlin if a military conflict with the West broke out. A mid-February 2022 poll conducted before the invasion found that 50 percent of respondents supported the use of force to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, and 36 percent to supported it to “reunite” Russia and Ukraine. The polls conducted around the annexation of Crimea similarly demonstrated high levels of support, which became known as “the Crimea consensus.”

Altogether, even in the period when the Putin regime was much less repressive, more than half of respondents in Russia consistently favored military action against neighboring states. It is hardly surprising that state-led propaganda was able to raise these numbers to 70–80 percent after February 2022. Conversely, no alternative robust evidence (such as large-scale protests within Russia or cities hosting large concentrations of the Russian diaspora) has emerged to cast doubt on these conclusions.

The joke is on us

Altogether, various approaches suggest that one can generally trust Russian public opinion data, albeit with some reservations. Specific feelings that underlie the war support—such as resignation, acquiescence, or avoidance—might be up for debate. But the very fact that the war is embraced by a majority of Russians, and that it has become part of Russia’s “new normal,” is not.

The cognitive difficulty among Russia watchers and members of the exiled liberal community to accept that reality is more puzzling. After all, why should Russians not support the war, given the years of state-led indoctrination, the legacy of Soviet beliefs, the lack of alternative narratives in the public sphere, and more pragmatic considerations such as adaption and avoidance of cognitive dissonance?

Acknowledgements

This report has profited from comments by Dina Smeltz, Timothy Frye, Henry Hale, and Nicholas Fenton. I am deeply thankful for all these comments. Any remaining errors are my own.

Maria Snegovaya is a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. She studies Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, as well as democratic backsliding in post-communist Europe.

Her analysis has been published in multiple policy and peer-reviewed journals. Her research and commentary have appeared in a number of publications such as the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Economist, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs. Her first book, When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right, was published with Oxford University Press in 2024. Her second manuscript, “Cadres Decide All: Russia’s Foreign Policy and Nomenklatura Continuity in Ruling Circles,” is under contract with Oxford University Press.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to promote policies that strengthen stability, democratic values, and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe in the West to the Caucasus, Russia, and Central Asia in the East.

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From a Russian perspective, the timing of Carlson’s visit and his message of impending nuclear apocalypse are fortuitous, to say the least. In recent weeks, the United States has granted Ukraine the right to use US-supplied missiles against military targets inside Russia, despite months of increasingly direct nuclear warnings from Russian officials. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, it would seem that Putin’s nuclear bluff has been called once too often and his threats are now viewed as empty. In such circumstances, it is easy to understand why Moscow would welcome Carlson’s arrival.

While the details of Carlson’s latest Moscow mission are not yet known, many have been quick to claim that the main objective of his visit is to amplify Putin’s nuclear blackmail. “Every day, I watch Russian experts on state TV complaining that Americans are not afraid of Moscow’s nuclear threats and wondering what they can do to scare us, in order to dissuade Americans from supporting Ukraine,” commented prominent Kremlin media monitor Julia Davis. “That’s why Tucker is in Moscow.”

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Nuclear intimidation has been central to Vladimir Putin’s strategy as he has sought to deter the West from coming to the aid of Ukraine following Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In his initial address announcing the decision to invade, Putin warned that any attempts at Western interference would be met with a nuclear response. Three days later, he underlined the message by placing Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.

Putin has continued to engage in regular bouts of nuclear bluster ever since. In September 2022, he vowed to defend Russia’s recent conquests in Ukraine with the country’s vast nuclear arsenal. “I’m not bluffing,” he stated. In spring 2024, he ordered nuclear drills after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the prospect of deploying troops to Ukraine. More recently, Putin has unveiled a revised Russian nuclear doctrine and declared that any decision to allow Ukrainian long-range strikes inside Russia using Western weapons would mean that the West was “at war” with Russia.

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For much of the current war, Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling has proved an effective tool, enabling him to limit the flow of military aid to Ukraine and impose restrictions on Kyiv’s ability to defend itself. However, there are now growing signs that Western leaders are no longer prepared to be intimidated. This is arguably long overdue. After all, ever since the early months of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine has consistently demonstrated a readiness to call Putin’s bluff and has repeatedly crossed Russian red lines without sparking a nuclear response.

In November 2022, Ukrainian forces liberated the key southern city of Kherson, just weeks after Putin had proclaimed it to be “forever Russian.” Despite this very personal humiliation, the Russian ruler did not reach for his nuclear briefcase. Instead, he ordered his defeated troops to retreat quietly across the Dnipro river. Likewise, when Ukraine challenged Putin’s grip on the occupied Crimean peninsula by sinking or disabling around one-third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, he opted not to escalate and withdrew the bulk of his remaining warships to the safety of Russian ports.

The biggest single blow to Putin’s intimidation tactics came in August 2024, when Ukraine crossed the reddest of all red lines by invading Russia itself. Tellingly, Putin’s response to the first foreign occupation of Russian soil since World War II was to downplay the significance of Kyiv’s bold offensive. Rather than attempting to rally his fellow Russians against the invader, Putin dismissed Ukraine’s incursion as a mere “provocation” and ordered the Kremlin media to convince domestic audiences that the presence of Ukrainian troops inside Russia’s borders was the “new normal.”

In recent weeks, the Kremlin has sought to counter the crumbling credibility of its nuclear threats by demonstrating a willingness to escalate. Following the US decision to authorize long-range attacks inside Russia, Moscow launched an experimental nuclear-capable ballistic missile at a city in central Ukraine. However, the stunt failed to convince Western officials to rethink their position, with Ukrainian airstrikes on Russian targets continuing. Quoting four unnamed Kremlin officials, The Moscow Times called the launch a “propaganda operation” that was designed to “put the Americans and the British in their place and scare Berlin and other Europeans into submission.”

It remains to be seen whether Tucker Carlson’s timely intervention will lead to a revival of Western paralysis in the face of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Putin’s ability to intimidate the West with nuclear threats has been his greatest single success of the entire war, but this approach is clearly no longer producing the desired results. If Western leaders can now convince the Kremlin that they have finally overcome their fear of escalation, this could help persuade Putin to engage in meaningful negotiations for a sustainable peace deal. Crucially, it would also send a powerful signal to other would-be aggressors that nuclear saber-rattling doesn’t work and will be met with a resolute response.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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It is important to acknowledge that Russian information warfare is highly innovative and continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Russia’s information offensives initially focused on the Kremlin’s own media platforms such as RT and Sputnik, but these outlets have proven relatively easy to identify, discredit, and restrict. In recent years, Russia has increasingly sought to promote its narratives via partners and proxies, as the recent scandal involving prominent US podcasters highlighted.

The pioneering use of social media troll farms to fuel divisions and distort public opinion remains a major component of Russian information warfare. In addition, the Kremlin engages in the large-scale creation of fake websites mimicking prominent news outlets, adding a veneer of credibility to Russian disinformation. 

Russian narratives are also evolving. In 2022, the Kremlin’s attempts to depict Ukraine as a Nazi state largely failed to connect with international audiences, who struggled to understand how a country with a popularly elected Jewish president and no far-right presence in government could be in need of “de-Nazification.” Instead, Moscow has turned its attention to promoting the decline of the West and the need for a new multipolar world order.

Through a wide variety of traditional and digital media initiatives, the Kremlin has sought to highlight economic problems in Europe and North America, while pushing the idea of growing Western public dissatisfaction over issues such as identity politics and minority rights. Meanwhile, Russia positions itself as a bastion of traditional family values, social stability, and conservatism. This has struck a chord with alienated segments of society throughout the West.  

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The Global South is currently a priority front in Russia’s information war. With the invasion of Ukraine leaving Russia isolated from the West, the Kremlin has reoriented its foreign policy toward the non-Western world. In its messaging to audiences across the Global South, Russia plays on historical resentment at centuries of Western colonialism and portrays itself as a fellow victim of the West. Despite Russia’s long history of imperial aggression and openly imperialistic ambitions in Ukraine, Putin has sought to win over audiences in Africa, Asia, and South America by posing as a defender against Western imperialism. 

It would be foolish to dismiss Russia’s anti-imperial messaging as absurd. Older generations across the Global South are often aware of the role played by the Soviet Union in the decolonization movement that followed World War II. Others have little knowledge of the imperial ambitions underpinning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and tend base their opinions on Putin primarily on his opposition to the West. This is helping to shape the geopolitical outlook throughout the Global South and is creating a range of foreign policy challenges for the West that expand far beyond the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   

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Another key element of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign is the claim that NATO enlargement represents a direct security threat to the Russian Federation and is the real cause of the war in Ukraine. This argument resonates loudly with international audiences suspicious of the West’s dominant role in world affairs. While other Russian attempts to justify the invasion of Ukraine have fallen flat, attempts to blame NATO have proved highly effective.

In reality, Putin seems well aware that NATO doesn’t pose a threat to Russia. Tellingly, he raised no serious objections in 2022 when neighboring Finland and Sweden announced their intention to join the alliance, despite the fact that this would more than double Russia’s NATO borders and transform the strategically crucial Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Indeed, he has since withdrawn most Russian troops from the country’s Finnish frontier. Evidently, Putin’s expansionist foreign policy reflects his opposition to Ukrainian independence rather than any artificial fears over NATO expansion. 

Putin’s NATO narrative may not stand up to scrutiny, but it is likely to play an important role in any upcoming peace talks, with Russia currently pushing for an end to NATO enlargement and a firm commitment to permanent Ukrainian neutrality. This would be potentially disastrous for international security. A neutral Ukraine would be highly vulnerable to further Russian aggression and eventual occupation. Meanwhile, rising anti-NATO sentiment in the US and elsewhere risks undermining transatlantic cooperation and fostering isolationism.

The West must trend carefully when attempting to confront Russian disinformation. Crucially, any efforts to moderate content on social media or impose restrictions on even the most openly propagandistic of platforms invites accusations of censorship. With this in mind, Western governments must walk a fine line as they seek to protect themselves against the Kremlin’s information warfare while safeguarding freedom of expression.  

Given the transnational nature of the modern information landscape, international cooperation is essential when attempting to combat Russian disinformation. Looking ahead, the Western response should include the creation of collaborative task forces, real-time intelligence sharing, and coordinated efforts to sanction state and private actors. Western policymakers must also match the Kremlin in terms of versatility and innovation if they wish to keep their countries safe in an increasingly complex and interconnected information environment. Putin’s Russia has demonstrated the importance of the information front in modern warfare. It is time for the West to catch up.

Kateryna Odarchenko is a partner at SIC Group Ukraine. Elena Davlikanova is a fellow at CEPA.

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This week’s awkward standoff in Tbilisi highlighted the ongoing geopolitical tensions sparked by Georgia’s controversial recent parliamentary vote. According to the country’s Central Election Committee, Georgian Dream was the clear winner with 54 percent of the vote. This outcome is questioned by opposition parties and election observers, who accuse the government of rigging the ballot.

Opponents led by Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili have claimed that the vote was flawed and have dismissed the official results as illegitimate. Zurabishvili branded the election a “Russian special operation,” a clear reference to the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Three monitoring groups, including the OSCE, have backed allegations of election irregularities including vote-buying, multi-voting, and widespread Russian disinformation.

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The election was widely seen as a referendum on Georgia’s future geopolitical direction. The country’s Russia-friendly authorities hoped to secure a mandate for a pro-Kremlin manifesto, while opponents sought to return Georgia to the path of Euro-Atlantic integration. This westward trajectory is certainly popular, with polls consistently indicating that around 80 percent of Georgians support the country’s bid for EU membership. At the same time, many have been alarmed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and are fearful of facing the same fate if they attempt to turn away from Moscow.

The Georgian Dream party has been in power since 2012 and is officially committed to supporting European integration. However, party officials in Tbilisi have become increasingly critical of the West in recent years, and have faced mounting accusations of trying to steer the country back into the Kremlin orbit. Criticism has intensified following the adoption earlier this year of draconian laws similar to the authoritarian policies of Putin’s Russia. Critics say these legislative changes are aimed at silencing Georgia’s political opposition and muzzling the country’s civil society.

In the wake of the disputed election, Georgia’s pro-Western political forces have vowed to fight back against what they see as an attempt to undermine their country’s fledgling democracy. A number of large protest rallies have taken place in downtown Tbilisi since the late October ballot. Meanwhile, opposition parties are demanding fresh elections, refusing to serve in the new parliament, and calling on Georgia’s Western partners to conduct an international investigation into allegations of electoral misconduct.

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Russia has refrained from officially celebrating the election victory of its Georgian Dream allies. Instead, Moscow has accused the West of trying to “destabilize” Georgia with calls for an investigation into alleged violations. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that the vote represents a significant geopolitical triumph for the Kremlin and a major setback for the West.

Critics of Georgia’s governing party fear the country may now follow the geopolitical trajectory of Belarus, which in recent years has become increasingly subject to creeping Russian control in every sphere of national life from the economy to defense. This would represent a significant turnaround for Russia, which had looked to be in danger of losing its traditional influence in the southern Caucasus region.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and continues to occupy approximately 20 percent of the country. Bilateral relations between Moscow and Tbilisi have remained tense ever since this brief war sixteen years ago. However, while the Georgian public has overwhelmingly backed closer ties with the West, many have also spoken of the need to avoid a resumption of hostilities with Russia. Georgian Dream officials have sought to exploit these concerns over the possibility of a new Russian invasion. During the recent election campaign, the party ran a series of controversial adverts featuring images of wartime destruction in Ukraine along with appeals to “choose peace.”

Some observers believe Russia’s approach to Georgia may offer hints of the Kremlin’s ultimate intentions in Ukraine. After first invading and occupying a large portion of Georgian territory, Russia then helped engineer the election of a sympathetic government that has paid lip service to the country’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations while working toward mending fences with Moscow. This proved possible despite frequent evidence of intense anti-Russian sentiment throughout Georgian society. While such an outcome is extremely hard to imagine in today’s wartime Ukraine, the remarkable revival of Russian influence in Georgia could certainly serve as inspiration for Kremlin policymakers.

Protests look set to continue in Tbilisi. However, it is not clear whether anything can now be done to prove the allegations of election fraud or annul the results of the October vote. Georgia’s Western partners have voiced their concerns over the election but remain reluctant to withhold official recognition. Georgia will be on the agenda when EU foreign ministers meet next week in Brussels, but the European Union is not expected to take a stance on the legitimacy of the election. Instead, the most meaningful sanction will likely be the continued freezing of EU membership talks, which have been on pause since June 2024.

With Western leaders unwilling to confront the Kremlin in the Caucasus, Russia is the real winner of Georgia’s recent elections. The vote has demonstrated Moscow’s ability to overcome popular opposition by forging powerful alliances with local elites and ignoring international concerns over election interference. Russia will doubtless seek to apply the lessons learned in Georgia as it turns its attention to future election campaigns in front line countries like Moldova, and may also seek to adopt a similar approach to postwar Ukraine.

Nicholas Chkhaidze is a research fellow at the Baku-based Topchubashov Center.

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Rutte’s claims are not new. The Russian authorities have long faced accusations of everything from cyberattacks and political manipulation to the deliberate spread of disinformation to destabilize individual countries and sow discord among Western allies. Russian hybrid warfare operations are now often kinetic operations within Western countries. Incendiary devices that ignited in Germany and the United Kingdom in July 2024 were reportedly part of a covert Russian operation that aimed to start fires aboard cargo and passenger flights heading to the US and Canada.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine now approaching the three-year mark, Moscow’s campaign of hybrid hostilities throughout the Western world appears to be escalating. As Russia’s tactics evolve, governments and security services throughout the West must work together to identify threats and counter the Kremlin.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Information operations are a central feature of Russian efforts to weaken the West. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the messaging emanating from Moscow has shifted from implausible accusations of a “Nazi regime” in Kyiv toward a greater focus on the inevitability of Russian military victory and the unreliability of Ukraine as a partner. These messages are being actively promoted throughout the West by Russian sources and by Moscow’s proxies.

For much of the past decade, Russia relied primarily on its own state-sponsored media outlets like RT and Sputnik to push narratives designed to undermine Western unity and polarize public opinion in democratic countries. However, in recent years there have been increasing efforts to co-opt non-traditional media and social media personalities throughout the West, such as US podcast hosts. This has made it possible for Russia to reach broader audiences, while also enhancing the credibility of its messaging by avoiding any overt links to the Kremlin.

Cyberattacks are another significant tactic used by Russia to undermine stability throughout the West. By disrupting communications, sowing chaos, and eroding public trust in institutions, Russian cyber warfare has the potential to disrupt and destabilize Western societies. One recent example was the December 2023 cyberattack on Ukraine’s largest telecommunications provider, which temporarily left millions of subscribers without mobile and internet access.

Russia has also sought to fuel political tensions by supporting populist movements and parties that align with the Kremlin’s own anti-NATO and anti-EU narratives. Throughout Europe and North America, the Kremlin is accused of empowering anti-establishment political parties and movements of all kinds. Moscow’s backing for far-right and far-left movements has been opportunistic rather than ideological, with an emphasis on support for any groups deemed capable of destabilizing domestic politics in Western countries. This approach has proved effective in amplifying the Kremlin’s narratives, while also making it harder to counter Russian influence and maintain support for Ukraine.

A further avenue of malign Russian influence is economic leverage, especially through the weaponized use of energy exports. While Europe’s overall dependence on Russian energy has declined significantly since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, A number of EU countries continue to rely heavily on Russian energy supplies. This makes them vulnerable to political pressure from Moscow.

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Western policymakers need to recognize that the hybrid security challenges currently coming from Russia are not going to go away soon. On the contrary, Putin is clearly preparing his country for a prolonged confrontation with the West. While open military conflict between Russia and NATO is still viewed as unlikely, Western nations must be better prepared to defend themselves against Russia’s escalating efforts to divide and destabilize them. This will require a multi-faceted approach that reflects the diverse nature of the hybrid threats posed by the Putin regime.

Addressing disinformation is vital. Western governments must intensify efforts to combat Russian information warfare by measures including support for fact-checking initiatives and improving media literary among the public. Before embarking on new steps of this nature in the information sphere, it is important to note that Russia has a record of successfully pushing back against countermeasures by framing them as attempts to suppress free speech.

Strengthening cyber defenses is another key task. NATO much invest in the recently announced Integrated Cyber Defence Centre to protect member states from Russian cyberattacks. The alliance should prioritize information sharing, joint cyber security exercises, and the development of rapid response teams to mitigate the impact of future attacks.

The Kremlin’s sophisticated brand of hybrid warfare poses a serious threat to Western unity and represents a critical front in the global confrontation that has emerged following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. By exploiting existing political, economic, and social vulnerabilities across Europe and North America, Russia aims to weaken the West from within. This requires a firm and coordinated response that includes efforts to counter disinformation, strengthen cyber defenses, and reduce energy dependence on Russia. Addressing these challenges is crucial for the future of transatlantic security in an increasingly complex and unpredictable geopolitical climate.

Doug Livermore is the National Vice President for the Special Operations Association of America, Senior Vice President for Solution Engineering at the CenCore Group, and the Deputy Commander for Special Operations Detachment – Joint Special Operations Command in the North Carolina Army National Guard. The views expressed are the author’s and do not represent official US Government, Department of Defense, or Department of the Army positions.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Oct 22, 2024

Axis of Autocrats: North Korea’s escalating role in Russia’s Ukraine War

By Olena Tregub

North Korean troops are reportedly set to join the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If confirmed, this would represent the latest escalation in North Korea’s support for Vladimir Putin’s imperial aggression, writes Olena Tregub.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Nov 5, 2024

Putin’s 2022 ‘peace proposal’ was a blueprint for the destruction of Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

New details of talks between Russia and Ukraine during spring 2022 confirm that Putin’s alleged peace proposal was in fact a call for unconditional surrender and a blueprint for the destruction of the Ukrainian state, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Oct 31, 2024

Ukrainians brace for blackouts ahead of Russian winter air offensive

By Aura Sabadus

A recent lull in Russian missile attacks has led many Ukrainians to conclude that the Kremlin is stockpiling ahead of a major winter air offensive targeting Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure, writes Aura Sabadus.

Conflict Geopolitics & Energy Security

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post The West must respond to Russia’s rapidly escalating hybrid warfare appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The target is you, voter. Russia, China, Iran, and other bad actors sought to interfere in the run-up to today’s US elections, according to research by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), which has been monitoring online trends along with statements by governments, private companies, and civil society in its Foreign Interference Attribution Tracker. As DFRLab experts detail below, this year’s malign efforts in many ways surpass previous influence campaigns in sophistication and scope, if not in impact—and they are expected to continue well after the polls close.

• Emerson T. Brooking (@etbrooking): Director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the DFRLab
• Dina Sadek (@DinaMSadek): Resident fellow at the DFRLab
• Graham Brookie (@GrahamBrookie): Atlantic Council vice president for technology programs and strategy, and senior director of the DFRLab 
• Kenton Thibaut (@kentonthibaut): Senior resident China fellow at the DFRLab 

Tipping the scale

• “By sheer volume, foreign interference in the 2024 US election has already surpassed the scale of adversarial operations in both 2016 and 2020,” Emerson says.
• Dina notes that each US adversary played to its strengths. For example, Iran and China “attempted to breach presidential campaigns in hack-and-leak operations that raise concerns about their cyber capabilities during and after the elections,” she tells us.
• At the same time, the United States is more prepared than it was in previous election cycles. Russian efforts in 2016 “made foreign interference a vivid fear for millions of Americans,” Emerson notes. “Eight years later, the US government is denouncing and neutralizing these efforts, sometimes in real time.”
• In fact, Graham tells us, “the combined actions by the US departments of Justice, Treasury, and State against two known Russian interference efforts was the largest proactive government action taken against election influence efforts before an election.”

Doppelgangers and down-ballot races

• US officials this week called Russia “the most active threat,” and it’s easy to understand why. Emerson notes Russia’s “ten-million-dollar effort to infiltrate and influence far-right American media,” alongside the “Doppelganger” network, which has spread “tens of thousands of false stories and staged videos intended to undermine election integrity in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.” Increasingly desperate, Russian actors have even sought to shut down individual polling places with fake bomb threats, he adds.
• Meanwhile, China has focused on “down-ballot races instead of the presidential election to target specific anti-China politicians,” Kenton explains. Using fake American personas and generative artificial intelligence, China-linked operations have appeared across more than fifty platforms. Perhaps surprisingly, Kenton adds, “attributed campaigns appeared sparingly” on the Chinese-owned platform TikTok and far more often on Facebook and X.

Faith, fakes, and falsehoods 

• “The primary aim is to erode Americans’ faith in democratic institutions and heighten chaos and social division,” Kenton explains, and thus to undermine the ability of the US government to function so it will have less bandwidth to contain adversarial powers.
• “Some of the fake and already debunked narratives and footage circulating before the elections will likely continue to be amplified by foreign threat actors well after November 5,” Dina predicts. Expect to see activity around the submission of certificates of ascertainment on December 11, the December 17 meeting of the electors to formally cast their votes, and through inauguration day on January 20.
• And in a post-election period where the results will likely be contested, Graham thinks there’s a “high likelihood” that foreign actors will “cross a serious threshold” from pre-election attempts to broadly influence American public opinion in service of their geopolitical interests to “direct interference” by trying to mobilize Americans to engage in protests or even violence.
• Nevertheless, Graham points out that the high volume of foreign-influence efforts observed during this year’s election cycle so far does not appear to have had a significant impact in terms of changing Americans’ opinions or behavior.  
• The consequences of foreign disinformation, Emerson adds, should be assessed against “the far more viral, sophisticated, and dangerous election-day falsehoods that Americans spread among themselves.”

Elections 2024: America’s role in the world

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The post What to know about foreign meddling in the US election appeared first on Atlantic Council.

At the same time, communicating news about war crimes and the victims of Russian violence balances on the fine line between the public interest and the right to privacy of those affected. The shocking photos and videos that appear in the aftermath of each round of Russian shelling draw attention, but how should journalists consider the potential consequences of publishing such material for the victims themselves?

To ensure that media coverage of conflict victims does not violate their privacy rights and further contribute to their trauma, a set of guidelines for reporting on war victims should be put in place, and journalists should make a good faith effort to obtain informed consent before publishing their stories and images.

Debates about boundaries

In the context of the ongoing conflict, the debate is deeply personal for many Ukrainians.

“If fate decrees that a rocket or something else hostile kills me, then I give permission in advance, with full awareness, for my photos—before and after my death—to be shared anywhere and as much as required,” Ukrainian communications expert Yaryna Klyuchkovska wrote on Facebook in early September.

“If I end up in a coma in the hospital, and all my relatives die—please forget about me and don’t touch me. Don’t post my pictures. . . . I am a psychologically weak person and will not care about your effectiveness in the international media,” responded Ukrainian writer and journalist Bogdan Logvynenko.

On September 4, Lviv was struck by Russian shelling, resulting in the deaths of nine people, including the Bazylevych family. The mother and her three daughters were among the dead, leaving only Yaroslav Bazylevych, their husband and father, alive. Photographs of a grief-stricken and wounded Yaroslav at the site of the shelling quickly spread across Ukrainian media. These images circulated widely, including among international media.

Almost immediately, a public debate broke out: How permissible is it for media outlets to publish photos of people who have just become victims of such barbaric crimes, at the very site where the crime occurred, and in their initial moments of shock? Does such publication adhere to media ethics, standards of the right to privacy, and respect for victims?

Proponents of publishing the photos argue that these images serve as documentation of Russian war crimes, both for the historical record and for the purposes of ensuring accountability for the perpetrators. The images are also intended not just for a domestic audience, but primarily for an international one. Proponents argue that such stories and visuals serve as reminders of the war in Ukraine and help gain international support for Kyiv.

On the other hand, critics argue that such publications could inflict additional suffering on the victims and contribute to their re-traumatization. Publishing photos of individuals in a state of shock, they argue, is a severe invasion of their privacy, even in the extreme context of war.

The situation in Lviv—where the photos of the victim were taken at the direct scene of the war crime—was not the first to occur during the armed conflict. Photos and videos of victims of Russian shelling, the shooting of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and other war crimes have repeatedly caused shockwaves in the Ukrainian media space.

However, the widespread focus on Bazylevych sparked especially intense debates about the ethics of such practices. At the funeral of the mother and children a few days later, media attention focused on Yaroslav’s personal tragedy, with photos and videos of him again circulating in the media and on social networks. 

The media coverage of conflict in the digital age can help prevent crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. But coverage of the victims and survivors of war crimes can also cause victims further suffering and contribute to their re-traumatization. In this context, journalists carry an increased level of professional responsibility. 

“We need to learn to maneuver between carefully preserving events and names and picking at the open wounds of relatives with red-hot iron. Between documenting crimes and savoring someone else’s grief. Because, of course, the world must know. Of course, we must know. But definitely not at the expense of those who have already given us and the world the most precious thing they had,” wrote Lesya Lytvynova, a veteran of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a week and a half later, commenting on the Bazylevych family tragedy and similar cases.

In his later comment to the Washington Post, Bazylevych recognized both the difficulty and importance of such broad media coverage: “It’s very difficult to see all of the attention and news on our family out there, but it’s also important”. 

One of the problems is that no universal legal or ethical rules exist for journalists in these wartime situations; international standards mainly prioritize journalists’ safety and professional protections over guidance on how and when to depict victims of armed conflict.

Setting standards for reporting on the victims of war

Some guidelines for how to report on the victims of war do exist, including the Code for the Coverage of the Colombian Armed Conflict, which was developed by Colombian journalists in 2003. The document states that “We will respect the privacy of citizens involved in or affected by the armed conflict, provided that this silence will not compromise the public interest. In all instances we will respect the grief of the victims.” In addition, there are recognized standards for how journalists should cover victims of crimes or people who cannot give informed consent to the press. These include standards for covering cases of violence against women and girls, interviewing trafficked women, and reporting on children. 

For instance, in Europe, the practice of the European Court of Human Rights provided guidance in Dupate v. Latvia on the limits of distributing visuals of individuals in a state of reduced self-control, even when the circumstances are of public interest.

The balance between public interest and victims’ right to privacy can serve as the key criterion for determining the permissibility of sharing media featuring individuals in a state of shock after a war crime.

The Commission on Journalistic Ethics, a Ukrainian organization, reached similar conclusions in its recommendations based on its review of this situation in September 2024:

“Media intrusions, including close-ups of a man who survived the shooting, are legally excessive. Even if individuals in a fragile psychological state give consent for filming and publication, they may not always be fully aware of their actions. In such cases, the portrayal of their suffering mainly serves one purpose—to satisfy the emotional curiosity of the information consumer.”

Ukraine’s tragic experience offers an important opportunity to reassess the media’s approach to reporting on conflict victims from both legal and ethical perspectives. Currently, Ukrainian media outlets are trying to align with the standards of major international outlets like the BBC and Reuters. However, this experience also provides a foundation for developing standards on covering war crimes that balance freedom of speech with respect for victims’ privacy. 

Building on the earlier recommendations, here are three important questions that journalists and editors should answer before publishing material on war crime victims:

1. Does the public interest necessitate the publication of an entire series of photos and videos? Would it be sufficient to share a single image or present the information in a more restrained manner (e.g. blurring faces, using initials, not specifying sensitive details, etc.)?
2. Is it necessary to publish such materials in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy? Would waiting a few days, when victims can provide informed consent, diminish its impact?
3. Is the publication in the public interest, rather than solely for increasing media coverage and visibility, and is the material presented in a way that minimizes the risk of secondary trauma and re-traumatization?

Of course, each case is unique, and the decision to publish may vary depending on the specific context. But without seriously considering these questions, media coverage of Ukraine risks shifting the focus of the publication from the fact of the crime and its consequences to how the victims experience these events, highlighting their emotions and behavior at different moments. And in the absence of the victims’ consent to publish these stories and photos, such publications risk exposing victims to “public curiosity”—a practice broadly prohibited by international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, for the protection of victims of war. 

Obviously, there is no universal set of criteria for deciding whether and when to publicize the stories and images of victims of conflict. However, at a time when information can be spread instantly, a responsible, victim-centered approach will require journalists to make a good faith effort to obtain informed consent from victims before publishing their photos and stories. Respect for the choice of victims is fundamental. Victims of the war in Ukraine have already been deprived of their choices by Russia’s aggression. They have the right to choose whether they want their stories to be publicized.

Ivan Horodyskyy is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project and cofounder of the Dnistryanskyi Center for Politics and Law.

The post Media coverage of Ukraine must balance public interest and victim privacy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Roshchyna, who worked as a staff reporter at Hromadske and as a freelance reporter for outlets including Ukrainska Pravda and Radio Free Europe, was renowned among colleagues for her integrity and personal courage. “She was a hardworking and brave reporter, sensitive to injustice,” commented former colleague Olga Tokariuk.

Roshchyna was best known for her reporting from behind the front lines in Russian-occupied Ukraine. She was first detained by Russian forces in March 2022 close to Mariupol. On that occasion, she was held for ten days before being released. Despite this experience, Roshchyna remained committed to raising awareness about conditions in Ukrainian regions under Kremlin control. She disappeared in summer 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine. Almost one year later, Kremlin officials confirmed that Roshchyna was in Russian custody.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

News of Roshchyna’s death sparked an outpouring of grief and anger in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called her death “a heavy blow.” Ukrainska Pravda chief editor Sevgil Musaieva led tributes from the journalistic community, decribing Roshchyna as “absolutely amazing” and recounting her commitment to reporting on the realities of life under Russian occupation.

Oksana Romaniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Institute of Mass Information, said the circumstances of Roshchyna’s death “makes you worry about other journalists who are in captivity.” Ukraine’s 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk called on international media watchdogs to demand answers from Russia over Roshchyna’s death. “What could have been done to make a young girl die?” she asked in one of many posts on Ukrainian social media mourning Roshchyna.

Members of the international community stressed the need to determine Russia’s role in the young Ukrainian journalist’s death. “We must honor her legacy by holding her captors accountable,” commented Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty CEO Steve Capus. National Press Club President Emily Wilkins called on the US to impose sanctions “against all Russian personnel involved.”

The European Union Delegation to Ukraine demanded a “thorough and independent investigation” into the circumstances of the journalist’s death in Russian detention. Meanwhile, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Senator Cardin said Roshchyna’s death was “heartbreaking” and served as a reminder of her bravery “reporting the truth about Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

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According to the Russian authorities, Roshchyna died while being transferred to Moscow from a detention facility in Taganrog that is particularly notorious among Ukrainian human rights groups for the widespread mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners. Ukrainian officials say they are now investigating her death as a war crime and an act of premeditated murder.

The death of Victoria Roshchyna in Russian custody highlights the dangers facing independent journalists attempting to cover the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to Petro Yatsenko of the Ukrainian Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Roshchyna was one of at least twenty-five Ukrainian journalists being held by Russia.

While the details regarding Roshchyna’s death have yet to be determined, she was known to be in good health prior to her detention. The journalist is one of many Ukrainian prisoners to have died in Russian custody since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022 amid reports of widespread human rights abuses. The vast majority of Ukrainians released in prisoner exchanges have recounted being subjected to torture by their Russian captors.

The US Department of State’s 2023 Human Rights Report confirmed Russia’s use of “systematic torture and abuse against thousands of captured Ukrainian military POWs and detained civilians.” In a September 2024 report, United Nations human rights officials stated that “torture has been used as a common and acceptable practice by Russian authorities” against Ukrainian detainees.

Over the past two and a half years, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been abducted from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine and imprisoned. Ukraine’s Media Initiative organization has compiled a list of 1,886 names, but the actual number of detainees is believed to be far higher. In the vast majority of cases, family members and colleagues have no information regarding the status of those being held by Russia.

Victoria Roshchyna was an inspirational figure to her colleagues in the media and a widely respected journalist who sought to give a voice to Ukrainian victims of Russian occupation. Her death serves as a chilling reminder of the war crimes currently being committed against the civilian population throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Oct 15, 2024

As the US election nears, anxiety is mounting in Ukraine

By Kate Spencer

Few countries have more at stake in the coming US presidential election than Ukraine, which is heavily dependent on US aid to sustain its fight against Russia’s ongoing invasion, writes Kate Spencer.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Oct 15, 2024

Ukraine may allow drone exports in bid to support domestic producers

By Marcel Plichta

Ukraine may allow the export of drones in a bid to boost domestic production amid limited state procurement budgets and to prevent Ukrainian drone manufacturers from relocating abroad, writes Marcel Plichta.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Oct 22, 2024

Axis of Autocrats: North Korea’s escalating role in Russia’s Ukraine War

By Olena Tregub

North Korean troops are reportedly set to join the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If confirmed, this would represent the latest escalation in North Korea’s support for Vladimir Putin’s imperial aggression, writes Olena Tregub.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Ukrainian journalist who exposed Russian occupation dies in Kremlin captivity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As Europe and the United States navigate leadership change and turnover on both sides of the Atlantic, the Europe Center’s new report Transatlantic horizons: A collaborative US-EU policy agenda for 2025 and beyond offers a productive vision for transatlantic relations with forward-looking policy recommendations for the next US administration and European Commission.

On this special edition of the #AtlanticDebrief, Europe Center Resident Senior Fellow Ilva Tare and Europe Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Maja Piscevic unpack their section of the report “Working on a new transatlantic approach toward the Western Balkans” and recommendations for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Staff

Jörn Fleck

Senior Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Digital Policy Economy & Business

The post #AtlanticDebrief – What is a new vision for a transatlantic approach to the Western Balkans? | A debrief from Ilva Tare and Maja Piscevic appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began ten years ago with the seizure of Crimea, history has been a key battleground. Putin set the tone himself by framing the spring 2014 occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as an act of historical justice. He then famously published a lengthy essay in the run-up to the full-scale invasion using his version of history to argue against Ukrainian statehood. When the Kremlin dictator sat down with American journalist Tucker Carlson in early 2024 for his most high-profile international interview of the entire war, it came as no surprise that he chose to begin by launching into a rambling half-hour history lecture.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

It should now be clear that the Kremlin’s attempts to distort history represent a serious threat to international security. Academia can help global audiences become less vulnerable to Russian disinformation by improving awareness of Ukraine’s national story and decoupling the country from the imperial narratives that form the basis of Putin’s claims. A recent conference at Princeton University brought together a distinguished panel of Ukrainian history experts to address the current state of Ukrainian historical studies and look ahead.

As Princeton professor and conference co-organizer Iryna Vushko noted, victims have not traditionally been viewed as particularly interesting in academic studies of history. In order overcome the obstacles inherent in histories written by the victors, it is important for academics to ensure that narratives around contemporary events make more effort to center the targets of international aggression.

During the conference, Harvard University professor of Ukrainian history Serhii Plokhy acknowledged that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “wrapped in bad historical mythology.” According to Plokhy, Putin is clearly motivated by his personal vision of Russian history as he seeks to reassert Russian dominance over Ukraine. The Harvard historian and prominent author observed that Putin’s attempts to root his invasion firmly in the past have had the unintended consequence of generating significant interest in Ukrainian history.

Despite this unprecedented attention, Russia’s invasion has in many ways highlighted how much work must still be done. Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies director Natalia Khanenko-Friesen noted that there is a need to “move forward on the decolonization of our field.” She pointed to projects such as the recently launched doctorate fellowship in indigenous Crimean Tatar studies at the University of Alberta as important contributions toward this goal.

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Decolonization will only be possible when Ukraine’s history is viewed beyond the context of established imperial narratives and on its own terms, of course. Yale University professor Marci Shore, whose work has focused on the intellectual history of Eastern Europe, reflected on how she feels the study of Ukraine should need no explanation. “This is a place I came to of my own free will because it was inherently fascinating,” she commented.

Shore noted that Ukraine has been at the forefront of key European intellectual and political developments for centuries. As they confront the current Russian invasion, Ukrainians are being forced to address some of the central questions of our time, including the meaning of national identity in twenty first century Europe and the balance between democratic values and national survival in a country waging an existential war.

There was broad agreement among conference panelists that the full-scale Russian invasion had thrust Ukraine into the international limelight. Martin Schulze Wessel of Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University said Ukraine was “no longer the periphery” and had instead moved to the center of European events. He argued that Ukraine’s extensive historical experience of Russian imperialism can offer important lessons for today’s policymakers. According to Schulze Wessel, this could help demonstrate the “illusion” of believing a sustainable peace can be achieved without strengthening Ukraine to resist further Russian aggression.

Significant challenges remain. Plokhy noted that while numerous Western universities have begun creating new positions in fields such as Ukrainian language and literature, Ukrainian history studies has not yet witnessed the same kind of growth. He called for more investment in the emerging generation of young scholars and greater support for Ukrainian institutes that will be capable of continuing their important work even if public interest in the region wanes.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed serious shortcomings in the international community’s awareness of the region. Putin and other Russian officials have exploited this lack of knowledge to push an unashamedly imperialistic interpretation of Ukrainian history. They have used this weaponized historical narrative to justify the largest European invasion since World War II. This underlines the need for universities to prioritize the study of Ukrainian history and center Ukrainian perspectives in conversations about the country.

Benton Coblentz is an MPA candidate at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Sep 21, 2024

Ukraine’s expanding drone fleet is flying straight through Putin’s red lines

By Giorgi Revishvili

Ukraine’s rapidly expanding campaign of long-range drone strikes is flying straight through Vladimir Putin’s red lines and could help persuade Kyiv’s Western partners to lift restrictions on attacks inside Russia, writes Giorgi Revishvili.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Aug 21, 2024

Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to downplay Ukraine’s invasion of Russia have severely dented his strongman image and make a mockery of the West’s escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Sep 19, 2024

Compromising with the Kremlin in Ukraine will only embolden Putin

By Kateryna Odarchenko, Elena Davlikanova

JD Vance recently claimed a Trump peace plan would include letting Russia retain occupied areas of Ukraine. But any concessions to the Kremlin will only embolden Putin and invite more war, write Kateryna Odarchenko and Elena Davlikanova.

Conflict European Union

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post History is a key battleground in the Russian invasion of Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Husain quoted in Spiked on the BBC and praising Islamists appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I’ve had a glimpse into how several industries work: Publishing, journalism, and the broader world of culture, including galleries and museums. Even before the big war, I knew more than I wanted to about how academia works (or rather doesn’t) when it comes to Ukraine. A common thread among all these fields is the limited attention they allocate to countries that do not occupy a place among the traditional big players of imperial politics.

Cultural imperialism lives on, even if its carriers often proclaim anti-colonial slogans. It thrives in gate-keeping, with editors and academics mistrusting voices that don’t sound like those higher up the ladder, while platforming those who have habitually been accepted as authoritative. “We’ve done Ukraine already” is a frequent response whenever you pitch an idea, text, or public event centering the country.

The editor who can’t keep publishing reviews of Ukraine-related books walks away, and I pick up a copy of one of the UK’s most prominent literary magazines to see their book recommendations. Out of a handful of reviews, three are on recent books about Russia. It seems like the space afforded to Russia remains unlimited. I close the publication to keep my blood pressure down.

Keeping my blood pressure down, however, is challenging. When my social media feeds aren’t advertising another production of Uncle Vanya, they’re urging me to splash out on opera tickets for Eugene Onegin. What happened to the dreaded “cancelling” of Russian culture? The Russia section in most bookshops I visit in the UK is growing daily with everything from yet another translation of Dostoevsky to accounts of opposition figures killed or imprisoned by the Kremlin.

The international media focus on the August 2024 release of Russian political prisoners was yet another example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. While these released prisoners were provided with a global media platform to call for an end to “unfair” sanctions on “ordinary Russians,” there was no mention of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who continue to languish in Russian jails.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The ongoing international emphasis on all things Russian goes hand in hand with a reluctance to transform growing interest in Ukraine into meaningful structural changes in how the country is perceived, reported on, and understood. Although there has been some improvement in knowledge about Ukraine since 2022, the move is essentially from having no understanding to having a superficial grasp.

Each time I read a piece on Ukraine by someone not well-versed in the country’s history and politics, my heart sinks. The chances are it will recycle historical cliches, repeat Kremlin propaganda about Russophone Ukrainians, or generalize about regional differences. And to add insult to injury, such articles also often misspell at least one family or place name, using outdated Russian transliterations. A quick Google search or a message to an actual Ukrainian could prevent these errors and save the author from looking foolish. Yet aiding this kind of colonial complacency seems to bother neither the authors nor the editors involved.

I often wonder what would happen if I wrote a piece on British or US politics and misspelt the names of historical figures, towns, and cities. How likely would I be to get it published? And yet the same standards do not apply when it comes to writing about countries that have not been granted priority status in our mental hierarchies of the world. We can misspell them all we like; no one will notice anyway. Apart from the people from those countries, of course. And when an exasperated Ukrainian writes to complain, I can almost see the editors rolling their eyes and thinking, “What does this perpetually frustrated nation want now? We’ve done Ukraine. Why are they never satisfied?”

It is not enough to simply “do Ukraine” by reviewing one book on the war, especially if it’s by a Western journalist rather than a Ukraine-based author. It’s not enough to host one exhibition, particularly if it is by an artist or photographer who only spent a few weeks in the country. Quickly putting together a panel on Russia’s war in response to a major development at the front and adding a sole Ukrainian voice at the last minute doesn’t cut it either. This box-ticking approach is unhelpful and insulting.

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It is important to acknowledge that some Western media outlets have significantly enhanced their coverage of Ukraine over the past two and a half years. They have typically done so by dedicating time and resources to having in-house experts who have either reported from Ukraine for many years, or who are committed to deepening their knowledge enough to produce high-quality analysis. However, many of these outlets still seem compelled to provide platforms for individuals entirely unqualified to analyse the region. Surely this isn’t what balance means?

Since February 2022, more than 100 Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed in the war. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, by May 2024, over 2,000 cultural institutions had been damaged or destroyed. This includes 711 libraries, 116 museums and galleries, and 37 theatres, cinemas, and concert halls. In May 2024, Russia bombed Factor Druk, the country’s biggest printing house.

When I attended this year’s Kyiv Book Arsenal, Ukraine’s largest literary festival, each panel began with a minute of silence to honor the memory of colleagues killed in the war. All this is in addition to mounting military losses, many of whom are yesterday’s civilians, including journalists and creatives who have either volunteered or been drafted into the army. This is the current state of the Ukrainian creative industry.

To save time for Western editors, publishers, and curators, let me clarify what all of us perpetually frustrated Ukrainians want. We would appreciate it if they turned to actual Ukraine specialists when working on Ukraine-related themes. Not those who suddenly pivoted from specializing in Russia, or who feel entitled to speak authoritatively because they discovered a distant Ukrainian ancestor, or those who have only recently shown interest in Ukraine due to business opportunities in the country’s reconstruction. We would be grateful if they took the time to seek out experts who have been studying Ukraine long before it became fashionable, who understand the country in all its complexity, and who care enough to offer Ukrainians the basic dignity of having their names spelt correctly.

I like to fantasise about a time when editors of top Western periodicals will choose to review books on Ukraine not simply because the country is at war and they feel obliged to cover it now and again, but because these books offer vital insights into democracy, the fight for freedom, or the importance of maintaining unity and a sense of humor in times of crisis. I hope for a day when galleries will host exhibitions of Ukrainian art, not just because it was rescued from a war zone, but because the artists involved provide fresh perspectives on the world.

I also dream that we, the perpetually frustrated Ukraine specialists, will eventually be able to focus on our own scholarship and creativity rather than correcting the mistakes and misleading takes of others. This will happen when cultural institutions, publishing houses, universities, and newspapers acquire in-house experts whose knowledge of Ukraine and the wider region extends beyond Russia.

Dr Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian and writer. She is the author of The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (2022). Khromeychuk has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Prospect, and The New Statesman, and has delivered a TED talk on What the World Can Learn From Ukraine’s Fight for Democracy. She has taught the history of East-Central Europe at several British universities and is currently the Director of the Ukrainian Institute London.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Sep 1, 2024

Key Ukrainian front line city evacuates as Russian offensive gains pace

By Maria Avdeeva

Evacuation efforts are accelerating in Pokrovsk as Russian troops draw closer amid fears the city will soon become the latest in a growing list of Ukrainian urban centers reduced to rubble by Putin’s invading army, writes Maria Avdeeva.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Aug 21, 2024

Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to downplay Ukraine’s invasion of Russia have severely dented his strongman image and make a mockery of the West’s escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Sep 2, 2024

The United States needs a long-term approach to Ukraine aid

By Doug Klain

It’s time the United States matched its allies by passing meaningful long-term support for Ukraine. If executed properly, the Blumenthal-Graham proposal could soon make that a reality, writes Doug Klain.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Too many still view Ukraine through the prism of Russian imperialism appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Since Ukraine’s invasion of Russia first began on August 6, it has dominated the international headlines and has been one of the top news stories around the world. Everywhere, that is, except Russia itself. While the global press has been reporting breathlessly on the first invasion of Russia since World War II, the Kremlin-controlled Russian media has been instructed to minimize the significance of Ukraine’s offensive and convince domestic audiences that the presence of Ukrainian troops inside Russia’s borders is the “new normal.”

This strategy has been all too evident on Russia’s federal TV channels throughout the past fortnight, with comparatively little coverage of Ukraine’s cross-border operation. Any mentions have typically been accompanied by euphemistic references to “the situation” or “events in Kursk region.” The Kremlin’s intense discomfort was perhaps most immediately obvious on last weekend’s episode of Russia’s flagship current affairs TV show, Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, with Russian MP and studio guest Andrey Gurulyov declaring, “the most important thing is for everyone to shut up.”

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Russia’s propagandists are taking their lead from Putin himself. The Kremlin dictator has remained remarkably tight-lipped over Ukraine’s invasion, and has limited himself to only a handful of public statements. Notably, there have been no attempts to rally the Russian people against the invader or engage in the kind of historical grandstanding that Putin normally favors. On the contrary, he has opted for a strikingly understated approach. Putin initially branded the invasion a “large-scale provocation,” and has since compared the advancing Ukrainian army to “terrorists.”

In recent days, Putin has sought to underline his apparent lack of concern over the invasion of Russia by embarking on a series of routine trips. First, he flew to Azerbaijan for a two-day visit that focused on strengthening bilateral trade ties. Next, he paid his first visit to Chechnya for thirteen years. Neither journey was urgent or in any way connected to Ukraine’s ongoing offensive.

Despite this very deliberate show of indifference, there have been numerous indications that Putin is in reality extremely rattled by the Ukrainian invasion. His evident disdain over the past fortnight while listening to Russian military commanders reporting fake battlefield victories has inspired multiple memes. In one particularly revealing exchange, Putin angrily interceded during a televised government meeting when the acting governor of Kursk region dared to disclose the scale of Ukraine’s territorial gains.

This behavior is nothing new. Indeed, Putin has long been notorious for going missing during times of national crisis, and has added to this unwanted reputation with numerous disappearing acts throughout the invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the unprecedented nature of Ukraine’s own counter-invasion makes his recent posture particularly revealing.

New Atlanticist Aug 15, 2024

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive marks Putin’s third major humiliation of the war

By Brian Whitmore

Ukrainian forces’ recent incursion into Kursk Oblast in Russia came as a shock and instantaneously transformed the narrative of the war.

Conflict Politics & Diplomacy

UkraineAlert Aug 20, 2024

Kursk offensive could help free Ukrainians in Russian captivity

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast has resulted in the surrender of unprecedented numbers of Russian soldiers, raising hopes of a large-scale prisoner exchange, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Aug 11, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia is erasing Vladimir Putin’s last red lines

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has erased the last of Vladimir Putin’s red lines and made a complete mockery of the West’s frequently voiced escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

The Russian ruler’s underwhelming response to Ukraine’s Kursk offensive can be at least partially explained by his genuine shock at what was a totally unexpected turn of events. Crucially, he may also have concluded that the present military situation leaves him with little choice.

Ukraine’s ongoing invasion has exposed the Russian military as dangerously overstretched. With his army fully committed and advancing at great cost in eastern Ukraine, Putin has no significant reserves to call upon and is deeply reluctant to withdraw his best units in order to protect Kursk Oblast. Instead, he is attempting to plug the gap with a ragtag collection of conscripts scraped together from across the Russian Federation. Faced with a choice between conquering Ukraine or defending Russia, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Putin cannot do both.

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Drones, defense, and diplomacy: Negotiations and the battlefield in Ukraine

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In the current circumstances, the Russian ruler may feel his best option is to downgrade Ukraine’s invasion to the level of border skirmish and pretend it is nothing to worry about. With the help of his formidable propaganda machine, this approach may indeed prevent panic from spreading inside Russia. Even so, there is no escaping the fact that by occupying more than one thousand square kilometers of Russian territory, Ukraine has dealt a serious blow to Putin’s strongman image and made a mockery of Russia’s claims to military superpower status. If this situation persists, it will also fatally undermine his ability to intimidate the international community.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has skillfully employed nuclear blackmail together with frequent warnings of Russian red lines to deter the West from supporting Ukraine. His bully boy approach has proved highly effective, with Western leaders consistently delaying decisions on new categories of military aid for Kyiv and imposing absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use Western weapons inside Russia. However, this may be about to change. Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has demonstrated that it is possible to cross the reddest of all Russian red lines without sparking World War III. As a consequence, many are now concluding that Putin’s saber-rattling is mere bluster.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has seized on the Kremlin’s weak response to his counter-invasion. He is now arguing that the time has come to abandon the concept of escalation management entirely, and is calling on Kyiv’s allies to lift all restrictions on attacks inside Russia. “The whole naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some partners, has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha,” Zelenskyy commented on August 20, referencing the largest Russian town currently under Ukrainian occupation.

So far, the US and other key allies have yet to revise existing weapons restrictions or announce any upgrade in arms deliveries to Ukraine. But if Putin continues to downplay the invasion of Russia while failing to retaliate in a manner befitting his country’s superpower pretensions, it will be increasingly difficult to justify the excessive caution that has shaped the international response to Russia’s war. Putin succeeded in bluffing the world for almost two-and-a-half years, but Ukraine has now called his bluff in the most emphatic manner.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jul 30, 2024

Paris Olympics: Ukrainian dedicates medal to athletes killed by Russia

By Mark Temnycky

Ukrainian fencing star Olga Kharlan has won the country’s first medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and dedicated her medal to the Ukrainian athletes “who couldn’t be here because they were killed by Russia,” writes Mark Temnycky .

Conflict France

UkraineAlert Aug 8, 2024

Ukraine continues to expand drone bombing campaign inside Russia

By Marcel Plichta

Ukraine’s long-range drone bombing campaign targeting military and industrial sites inside Russia has had a dramatic series of successes over the last few weeks, writes Marcel Plichta.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Aug 6, 2024

Russia’s Black Sea defeats get flushed down Vladimir Putin’s memory hole

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s readiness to flush Russia’s Black Sea naval defeats down the memory hole is a reminder that the Kremlin propaganda machine controls Russian reality and can easily rebrand any retreat from Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Invasion? What invasion? Putin is downplaying Ukraine’s Kursk offensive appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russians first began reporting significantly slower YouTube loading speeds in the weeks preceding the August shutdown. Officials in Moscow claimed this was the result of technical problems, but the Kremlin has also recently signaled its mounting dissatisfaction with YouTube. In July, Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor called on Google’s CEO to restore over 200 pro-Kremlin YouTube channels that had been blocked for violations. Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the platform of carrying out “the political directives of Washington.”

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The recent crackdown on YouTube is the latest milestone in a war against free speech in Russia that began when Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. During the 1990s, the Russian media sector had briefly flourished amid unprecedented freedoms. One of Putin’s first major acts as president was to reverse this trend and reassert Kremlin control over Russia’s mainstream media.

The Russian authorities have continued to expand their campaign against the country’s shrinking independent media sector for much of the past two decades. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin moved to block or restrict major Western social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These measures were imposed in parallel to Orwellian new restrictions banning any references to “war” and forcing Russian media outlets to refer to the invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation.”

UkraineAlert Aug 15, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia exposes the folly of the West’s escalation fears

By Oleksiy Goncharenko

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has shown that Putin’s talk of red lines and his nuclear threats are just a bluff to intimidate the West, writes Oleksiy Goncharenko.

Conflict Defense Policy

New Atlanticist Aug 15, 2024

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive marks Putin’s third major humiliation of the war

By Brian Whitmore

Ukrainian forces’ recent incursion into Kursk Oblast in Russia came as a shock and instantaneously transformed the narrative of the war.

Conflict Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Aug 9, 2024

Is Ukraine’s raid into Russia a ‘crossing the Delaware’ moment?

By Daniel Fried

With echoes of earlier raids, Ukraine’s recent push into the Kursk region of Russia shows its tactical cunning, audacity, and tenacity against a superior foe.

Conflict Russia

It is easy to see why Putin may now have decided to block YouTube. After all, reports of a widespread freeze came just days after Ukraine launched a surprise cross-border offensive into Kursk Oblast, marking the first invasion of Russia since World War II. While the Kremlin-controlled Russian state media has sought to downplay the invasion, ordinary Russians have used YouTube to post information about the Ukrainian advance and publish videos contradicting the official Moscow narrative.

As Ambassador Daniel Fried has emphasized, this ongoing Ukrainian offensive “upends the Kremlin narrative of inevitable Russian victory” in Ukraine, and threatens to lift the veil of propaganda that the Russian authorities have created since the start of the full-scale invasion. By slowing down or blocking access to YouTube, Moscow may be hoping to prevent any public panic over Ukraine’s Kursk offensive.

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Recent steps to limit access to YouTube are seen as somewhat risky due to the video sharing platform’s status as the most popular social media site in Russia. Indeed, it came as no surprise when the apparent shutdown of YouTube sparked significant alarm and anger on Russian social media. Notably, no genuine alternative currently exists in Russia. The Kremlin has promoted similar domestic platforms such as VK Video and RuTube, but these options have not been able to rival the popularity or audience reach of YouTube itself.

There are additional indications that the Kremlin may now be seeking to strengthen its control over the information space and further cut Russia off from the outside world. On August 9, Roskomnadzor blocked access to Signal, a messaging app that allows for end-to-end encrypted communications. Reports also continue to circulate that the Kremlin is preparing to take similar steps against messenger platform WhatsApp.

Recent measures to prevent Russians from accessing YouTube represent the latest escalation in the Kremlin’s campaign to dominate the domestic information space and eliminate all independent media in today’s Russia. Over the past twenty-four years, Vladimir Putin has created a powerful propaganda machine that has proved instrumental in legitimizing his own increasingly dictatorial rule and mobilizing public support for the invasion of Ukraine. Popular social media platforms like YouTube remain outside of Moscow’s control and therefore pose a significant threat to the Kremlin censors. With Ukrainian troops now advancing inside Russia itself, it would seem that this threat can no longer be tolerated.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 13, 2024

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive proves surprise is still possible in modern war

By Mykola Bielieskov

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has succeeded in demonstrating that surprise is still possible despite the increased transparency of the modern battlefield, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Aug 11, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia is erasing Vladimir Putin’s last red lines

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has erased the last of Vladimir Putin’s red lines and made a complete mockery of the West’s frequently voiced escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Aug 1, 2024

Ukraine’s new F-16 jets won’t defeat Russia but will enhance air defenses

By Mykola Bielieskov

Ukraine’s fledgling fleet of F-16 jets will not win the war but should strengthen the country’s air defenses and help protect the civilian population from Russian bombardment, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post The Kremlin is cutting Russia’s last information ties to the outside world appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Ukrainian military’s ability to maintain a veil of secrecy around preparations for the current operation is all the more remarkable given the evidence from the first two-and-a-half years of Russia’s invasion. The war in Ukraine has been marked by the growing importance of drone and electromagnetic surveillance, creating what most analysts agree is a remarkably transparent battlefield. This is making it more and more difficult for either army to benefit from the element of surprise.

Given the increased visibility on both sides of the front lines, how did Ukraine manage to spring such a surprise? At this stage there is very little detailed information available about Ukraine’s preparations, but initial reports indicate that unprecedented levels of operational silence and the innovative deployment of Ukraine’s electronic warfare capabilities played important roles.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Ukraine’s political leaders have been unusually tight-lipped about the entire offensive, providing no hint in advance and saying very little during the first week of the campaign. This is in stark contrast to the approach adopted last year, when the country’s coming summer offensive was widely referenced by officials and previewed in the media. Ukraine’s efforts to enforce operational silence appear to have also extended to the military. According to The New York Times, even senior Ukrainian commanders only learned of the plan to invade Russia at the last moment.

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive appears to have been a major surprise for Ukraine’s Western partners. The Financial Times has reported that neither the US nor Germany were informed in advance of the planned Ukrainian operation. Given the West’s record of seeking to avoid any actions that might provoke Putin, it is certainly not difficult to understand why Kyiv might have chosen not to signal its intentions.

UkraineAlert Aug 11, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia is erasing Vladimir Putin’s last red lines

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has erased the last of Vladimir Putin’s red lines and made a complete mockery of the West’s frequently voiced escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

New Atlanticist Aug 9, 2024

Is Ukraine’s raid into Russia a ‘crossing the Delaware’ moment?

By Daniel Fried

With echoes of earlier raids, Ukraine’s recent push into the Kursk region of Russia shows its tactical cunning, audacity, and tenacity against a superior foe.

Conflict Russia

Fast Thinking Aug 8, 2024

How Ukraine’s incursion into Russia could change the war

By Atlantic Council

Ukrainian forces launched a surprise raid into Russia’s Kursk region on Tuesday. Our experts explain how this could affect the course of the war.

Conflict Defense Policy

This approach seems to have worked. In recent days, the US, Germany, and the EU have all indicated their support for the Ukrainian operation. If Ukraine did indeed proceed without receiving a prior green light from the country’s partners, planners in Kyiv were likely counting on the reluctance of Western leaders to scupper Ukrainian offensive actions at a time when Russia is destroying entire towns and villages as it continues to slowly but steadily advance in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s expanding electronic warfare capabilities are believed to have been instrumental in safeguarding the element of surprise during preparations for the current campaign. The Ukrainian military appears to have succeeded in suppressing Russian surveillance and communications systems across the initial invasion zone via the targeted application of electronic warfare tools. This made it possible to prevent Russian forces from correctly identifying Ukraine’s military build-up or anticipating the coming attack until it was too late.

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Drones, defense, and diplomacy: Negotiations and the battlefield in Ukraine

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It is also likely that Ukraine benefited from Russia’s own complacency and overconfidence. Despite suffering a series of defeats in Ukraine since 2022, the Kremlin remains almost pathologically dismissive of Ukrainian capabilities and does not appear to have seriously entertained the possibility of a large-scale Ukrainian invasion of the Russian Federation. The modest defenses established throughout the border zone confirm that Moscow anticipated minor border raids but had no plans to repel a major Ukrainian incursion.

Russia’s sense of confidence doubtless owed much to Western restrictions imposed on Ukraine since the start of the war that have prohibited the use of Western weapons inside Russia. These restrictions were partially relaxed in May 2024 following Russia’s own cross-border offensive into Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast, but the Kremlin clearly did not believe Kyiv would be bold enough to use this as the basis for offensive operations inside Russia. Vladimir Putin is now paying a steep price for underestimating his opponent.

It remains far too early to assess the impact of Ukraine’s surprise summer offensive. One of the most interesting questions will be whether Ukraine can force the Kremlin to divert military units from the fighting in eastern Ukraine in order to defend Russia itself. Much will depend on the amount of Russian land Ukraine is able to seize and hold. Putin must also decide whether his military should focus on merely stopping Ukraine’s advance or liberating occupied Russian territory.

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has succeeded in demonstrating that surprise is still possible on the modern battlefield. This is a significant achievement that underlines the skill and competence of the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian invasion has also confirmed once again that Putin’s talk of Russian red lines and his frequent threats of nuclear escalation are a bluff designed to intimidate the West. Taken together, these factors should be enough to convince Kyiv’s partners that now is the time to increase military support and provide Ukraine with the tools for victory.

Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at Ukrainian NGO “Come Back Alive.” The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal position and do not reflect the opinions or views of NISS or Come Back Alive.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 11, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia is erasing Vladimir Putin’s last red lines

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has erased the last of Vladimir Putin’s red lines and made a complete mockery of the West’s frequently voiced escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Aug 1, 2024

Ukraine’s new F-16 jets won’t defeat Russia but will enhance air defenses

By Mykola Bielieskov

Ukraine’s fledgling fleet of F-16 jets will not win the war but should strengthen the country’s air defenses and help protect the civilian population from Russian bombardment, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Aug 8, 2024

Ukraine continues to expand drone bombing campaign inside Russia

By Marcel Plichta

Ukraine’s long-range drone bombing campaign targeting military and industrial sites inside Russia has had a dramatic series of successes over the last few weeks, writes Marcel Plichta.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Ukraine’s Kursk offensive proves surprise is still possible in modern war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

An initiative led by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center in partnership with the US Department of State continues to focus on facilitating greater constructive exchange among multisectoral thought leaders and government leaders as they work to implement commitments made at the ninth Summit of the Americas. This readout was informed by a private, information-gathering roundtable and several one-on-one conversations with leading experts in the digital space.

Executive summary

At the ninth Summit of the Americas, regional leaders agreed on the adoption of a Regional Agenda for Digital Transformation that reaffirmed the need for a dynamic and resilient digital ecosystem that promotes digital inclusion for all peoples. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the digital divide globally, but these gaps were shown to be deeper in developing countries, disproportionately affecting women, children, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable and/or marginalized individuals. Through this agenda, inclusive workforce development remains a key theme as an avenue to help bridge the digital divide and skills gap across the Americas.

As part of the Atlantic Council’s consultative process, thought leaders and practitioners evaluated progress made in the implementation of the Regional Agenda for Digital Transformation agreed on at the Summit of Americas, resulting in three concrete recommendations: (1) leverage regional alliances and intraregional cooperation mechanisms to accelerate implementation of the agenda; (2) strengthen public-private partnerships and multisectoral coordination to ensure adequate financing for tailored capacity-building programs, the expansion of digital infrastructure, and internet access; and (3) prioritize the involvement of local youth groups and civil society organizations, given their on-the-ground knowledge and role as critical indicators of implementation.

Recommendations for advancing digitalization and workforce development in the Americas:

Report

May 31, 2024

PACC 2030 objectives: The road to implementation

By Wazim Mowla, Charlene Aguilera

The Atlantic Council organized a PACC 2030 Working Group and worked closely with governments, the business community, and civil society organizations to support the implementation of PACC 2030’s objectives.

Caribbean Climate Change & Climate Action

Report

Apr 16, 2024

Advancing health and resilience policies in Latin America and the Caribbean

By Isabel Chiriboga, Martin Cassinelli, Diego Area

During an off-the-record private roundtable, thought leaders and practitioners from across the Americas discussed how to further enhance access to and finance for health services and products in the region.

Coronavirus Latin America

Summit of the Americas

An initiative led by the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council in partnership with the US Department of State focused on facilitating greater, constructive exchange among multi-sectoral thought leaders and government leaders as they work to implement Summit commitments.

Staff

Isabel Chiriboga

Assistant Director

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Colombia Corruption

Staff

Maite Gonzalez Latorre

Program Assistant

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Americas Education

Former staff

Diego Area

Former Director, Strategic Development Partnerships

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Crisis Management Democratic Transitions

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

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The post The future of digital transformation and workforce development in Latin America and the Caribbean appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Despite barely having a navy of its own, Ukraine has managed to sink or severely damage approximately one-third of Putin’s fleet, forcing the bulk of his remaining warships to retreat from occupied Crimea. The war at sea has gone so badly for Russia that by spring 2024, Britain’s Ministry of Defense was already declaring the Black Sea Fleet “functionally inactive.”

The details of this year’s Russian Navy Day program provided some hints of the inglorious reality behind Moscow’s efforts to project naval strength. Tellingly, the traditional parade of Russian warships along the Neva River to the Kronstadt naval base, which usually serves as the centerpiece of the entire holiday, was canceled due to security concerns. In its place, a reduced flotilla took part in a significantly scaled down event that featured around half as many vessels as in previous years.

Despite being by far the smallest Russian Navy Day since the holiday was reinstated in 2017, this year’s event nevertheless represented an excellent opportunity for Putin to honor Russia’s fallen sailors and vow retribution for the country’s unprecedented losses in the Black Sea. In fact, he did nothing of the sort. Throughout his official address, Putin barely mentioned the casualties suffered or the sacrifices made by the Russian Navy during the invasion of Ukraine. Instead, the Kremlin dictator preferred to flush Russia’s Black Sea defeats down the memory hole. He was aided by the loyal Russian media, which carefully avoided any awkward references to the disaster that has befallen the country’s Black Sea Fleet.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

All this brings to mind an old Soviet joke that begins with Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great looking down from heaven at a Red Army parade on Red Square. Caesar indicates the endless rows of Soviet troops and says, “with so many men, I could have held Germania.” Alexander points to the tanks and missiles and declares, “with such weapons of war, I could have conquered all India.” Napoleon, meanwhile, completely ignores the parade and is instead engrossed in a copy of Pravda. “If I had such a newspaper,” he proclaims, “nobody would have heard of Waterloo.”

Many Soviet jokes have not aged well, but this particular punchline remains as relevant as ever in modern Russia, where Putin has succeeded in creating a propaganda machine every bit as potent as its Soviet predecessor. Today’s Kremlin-controlled multimedia ecosystem is far more sophisticated than its Communist forerunner, but it serves the same basic function of bending reality to suit the whims of Russia’s ruling elite.

For the past decade, Putin has used this unrivaled information weapon to fuel the biggest European invasion since World War II. Kremlin propagandists have managed to convince millions of ordinary Russians that democratic Ukraine is actually a “Nazi state” whose very existence poses an intolerable threat to Russia. Ukrainians have been demonized and dehumanized to such an extent that genocidal anti-Ukrainian rhetoric is now a routine feature on prime time Russian TV.

The success of these efforts is all too apparent, with a wide range of opinion polls, research, and anecdotal evidence pointing to consistently high levels of Russian public support for the invasion. Meanwhile, there is no meaningful anti-war movement in the country, despite widespread knowledge of the horrors taking place in neighboring Ukraine. This is not surprising. After all, as Voltaire once warned, those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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Putin’s ability to distort Russian reality is genuinely terrifying, but the sheer scale of his propaganda operation could also inadvertently offer hope for the future. Many commentators have argued that failure in Ukraine would lead to the fall of the Putin regime and quite possibly the breakup of Russia itself, but these concerns may be exaggerated. While a third Russian collapse in a little over a century cannot be ruled out, the experience of the past two-and-a-half years gives good cause to believe that Moscow’s disinformation industry is more than capable of rebranding any future retreat from Ukraine in a favorable light, or of burying it completely. In other words, if the Russian media can manufacture a major war, it can also fabricate a suitably plausible peace.

Anyone who still doubts the Kremlin’s capacity to whitewash military defeat in Ukraine hasn’t been paying attention. We have recently witnessed Putin hosting the biggest naval event of the year while studiously ignoring the historic humbling of his southern fleet. It was the same story in 2022, when he ceremoniously announced that Kherson had joined Russia “forever,” only to order his beaten troops to abandon the city just weeks later. Likewise, when Russia lost the Battle of Kyiv during the initial phase of the invasion, the Kremlin refused to acknowledge defeat and absurdly insisted that the retreat from northern Ukraine was a mere “goodwill gesture.” If Putin is eventually forced to end his invasion, it seems safe to assume he will downplay this humiliation in similar fashion.

Since February 2022, Western leaders have found numerous reasons to limit their support for Ukraine. Some are restricted by modest defense budgets and competing domestic priorities. Most are afraid of possible escalation and have allowed themselves to be intimidated by Putin’s talk of Russian red lines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says many of his country’s Western partners are also reluctant to arm Ukraine because they fear the unpredictable geopolitical consequences of a Russian defeat. This Western alarm over a possible Russian collapse is exaggerated and fails to account for the power of Putin’s propaganda.

If Russia suffers a decisive defeat in Ukraine, past experience indicates that the Kremlin will almost certainly seek to move the goalposts, change the narrative, or devise some other way of rewriting history and claiming victory. Any embarrassing evidence of failure would simply be flushed down the memory hole, along with all the sunken Russian warships of the Black Sea Fleet.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 1, 2024

Ukraine’s new F-16 jets won’t defeat Russia but will enhance air defenses

By Mykola Bielieskov

Ukraine’s fledgling fleet of F-16 jets will not win the war but should strengthen the country’s air defenses and help protect the civilian population from Russian bombardment, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Jul 16, 2024

Russia’s retreat from Crimea makes a mockery of the West’s escalation fears

By Peter Dickinson

The Russian Navy’s quiet retreat from Crimea highlights the emptiness of Putin’s red lines and the self-defeating folly of Western escalation management, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Jul 30, 2024

Paris Olympics: Ukrainian dedicates medal to athletes killed by Russia

By Mark Temnycky

Ukrainian fencing star Olga Kharlan has won the country’s first medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and dedicated her medal to the Ukrainian athletes “who couldn’t be here because they were killed by Russia,” writes Mark Temnycky .

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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On August 3, GCH/IPSI nonresident senior fellow Dexter Tiff Roberts was quoted in VOA regarding the disappearance of Chinese commentator Hu Xijin from social media after a controversial post. Roberts explained that this incident underscores the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing control over public discourse, particularly as the economy faces growing challenges. He explained that the Chinese government is clamping down on dissent to maintain stability, reflecting the leadership’s limited tolerance for critical opinions. 

Fellow

Dexter Tiff Roberts

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Global China Hub Indo-Pacific Security Initiative

China Chinese

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We at the Atlantic Council are overjoyed and relieved that Evan has been released after 491 days of wrongful imprisonment in Russia. This is a great day for Evan, his family, and his colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, who worked tirelessly to secure his release. However, it doesn’t diminish our need to speak out against Russia’s crimes not only against Evan but against free speech more broadly.

As Almar Latour, Wall Street Journal publisher and Dow Jones CEO, said at the Atlantic Council’s Distinguished Leadership Awards in May 2023, “Evan’s arrest is a symbolic reminder of the fight that we find ourselves in today. It’s autocrats versus the power of the pen—disinformation versus reliable information as the bedrock of free society.”

Latour’s point was underscored by those released with Evan: two other Americans wrongfully detained—journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and former US Marine Paul Whelan—as well as Russian political dissident and Pulitzer Prize winner Vladimir Kara-Murza, among others. In exchange, a contemptible lot, including a convicted murderer and several hackers and spies, was welcomed back to Russia by President Vladimir Putin.

Watch Latour’s full speech below:

Evan’s resilience and steadfastness are testament to the courage of journalists worldwide who take risks every day in service to freer societies. In partnership with Adrienne Arsht, the Atlantic Council has been proud to champion Evan’s cause through our “Reporters at Risk” series, which highlights those dangers and underscores the importance of supporting their critical work.

The Atlantic Council remains committed to press freedom and defending the safety of reporters at risk like Evan. As a twenty-five-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal, I welcome him home as a colleague. On behalf of the Atlantic Council, we commit ourselves to defending the freedoms he and reporters like him around the world represent.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Welcome home, Evan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

John E. Herbst: Putin’s motivation for hostage trades is personal

Mercedes Sapuppo: The prisoner releases are historic—but the Kremlin’s strategy hasn’t changed

Hanna Liubakova: German national’s case reveals Belarus’s hostage-taking tactics

Brian Whitmore: This wasn’t a Cold War prisoner swap, but rather a negotiation with a crime syndicate

Putin’s motivation for hostage trades is personal

Today’s news is a truly extraordinary event: a large prisoner exchange involving twenty-four captives in seven countries. Russia and Belarus released sixteen prisoners; and the United States, Germany, Poland, Norway, and Slovenia sent eight back to Russia. Those released by Moscow include three Americans held essentially as hostages on trumped-up charges—businessman Whelan and journalists Gershkovich and Kurmasheva—and political prisoners Kara-Murza and Yashin. Belarus released Rico Krieger, a German convicted of “terrorism” in Belarus, who was sentenced to death but then pardoned by Lukashenka’s regime. The most notable prisoner released to Russia is Krasikov, a Kremlin operative who murdered a Chechen activist in Germany.

Two constants drove this deal. The first is Putin’s great interest in securing the release of Russian spies and provocateurs captured and jailed in the West. When he succeeded in trading American basketball player Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout with the United States in December 2022, Putin’s highest priority became the release of Krasikov from Germany. When Putin gave up Griner, he still had Whelan as a hostage for future trades with the United States. Then he added Gershkovich in March 2023 for additional trade bait and Kurmasheva this past spring. The second constant is the Biden administration’s interest in securing the release of all Americans unfairly detained by Moscow. After the Griner-Bout exchange, US efforts to secure the freedom of Whelan and then Gershkovich foundered on the refusal of Germany to include Krasikov—Putin’s prime objective—in any trade.

These constants alone do not explain this deal. The new factor was the arrest of Krieger in Belarus last fall. This gave Berlin a reason to consider releasing Krasikov. Germany’s willingness to do so likely set in motion a long negotiation that led to today’s news. The final deal also gave Putin back Russian operatives in Norway, Poland, and Slovenia; and provided an opportunity to free prominent Russian opposition figures Kara-Murza and Yashin.

It is notable that sixteen prisoners moved West and only eight east. But, as we know from the lopsided trade that sent 215 Ukrainian prisoners of war home in exchange for Putin-favorite Viktor Medvedchuk and others in the fall of 2022, there are times when Putin’s interest in a particular captive persuades him to make an uneven trade.

Still, Putin has the tactical advantage of being able to grab additional hostages from Americans and other Western visitors in Russia. One way for the West to reduce this nasty advantage would be to lower the evidentiary requirements for holding spies from Russia and other US adversaries.

—John E. Herbst is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.

The prisoner releases are historic—but the Kremlin’s strategy hasn’t changed

The news that Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, Whelan, Kara-Murza, and Yashin—along with other human rights activists and innocent civilians—have been released from Russia in a prisoner swap is historic. For those now free who were wrongfully detained on contrived and false charges and bravely endured the conditions of Russian detention, today is hugely celebratory. It is also a good day for their families and for all who have been advocating for their freedom, including the Biden-Harris administration. The swap released many who suffered unjustly and marks a positive day for independent media and press freedom.

The timing of this swap—and its scope—indicates that Putin thought it was time to cash out the bargaining chips that he had illegally collected to leverage against the West in the form of innocent Americans and Russian activists. However, it does not suggest that the Kremlin will pull back on its malign tactics of aggression against Ukraine as well as the United States and its allies, and Putin is by no means walking away empty-handed: Russia will welcome home convicted murderers, spies, hackers, fraudsters, and smugglers.

What this swap demonstrates on the Kremlin’s strategic front is a twisted and self-serving pragmatism that is unlikely to translate into a deescalation of Russia’s violence in Ukraine, nor into a new appreciation for international norms. Putin is still a war criminal, and he is still bolstering his autocratic alliances abroad. The drive demonstrated by global leaders and advocates pushing for the release of these unjustly detained journalists and activists should not be the end. Rather, it should be only the beginning of continued work to defeat Putin in Ukraine and deter his aggression, which includes the imprisonment of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers being kept in harrowing conditions in temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine.

—Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

German national’s case reveals Belarus’s hostage-taking tactics

The prisoner swap story between Russia and Western countries took an unexpected turn with Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s involvement. Krieger, a German national sentenced to death in Belarus, was among the Western prisoners released in Thursday’s exchange. His case gained attention following his pardon on July 30. The unusual circumstances surrounding Krieger’s sentencing had sparked speculation that the Minsk regime was positioning itself for a high-profile prisoner exchange.

Shortly after the pardon, Lukashenka’s spokesperson indicated that Minsk was open to negotiations regarding Krieger, stating that various “proposals” had been made. This suggested that the pardon was a strategic maneuver to facilitate discussions with Germany. Krieger’s exchange demonstrated the Belarusian regime’s manipulative tactics, with speculation arising that he was swapped for Krasikov, a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) assassin imprisoned in Germany.

Krieger was arrested in Belarus in October for allegedly acting as a mercenary and planting explosives. He appeared in a propaganda video, claiming he wanted to fight in Ukraine but was directed to a mission in Belarus. However, the inconsistencies in the video raise doubts about his claims.

The regime’s actions—capturing a foreigner, sentencing him to death, and then negotiating his release—resemble hostage-taking tactics. While Russia may have reclaimed some of its agents in part through Krieger’s exchange, Lukashenka seems to be sacrificing his relationship with Germany to support Putin’s interests. This mirrors Lukashenka’s previous concessions to Russia, including offering Belarusian territory for the invasion of Ukraine, despite his people’s opposition, or stationing Wagner Group troops in Belarus.

Amid these high-stakes negotiations, the plight of Belarusian political prisoners is often overlooked. Although eighteen political prisoners were released last month, an estimated 1,400 remain imprisoned, many urgently needing medical assistance.

—Hanna Liubakova is a nonresident fellow with the Eurasia Center and a Belarusian journalist.

This wasn’t a Cold War prisoner swap, but rather a negotiation with a crime syndicate

The sweeping prisoner exchange that freed Kurmasheva, Gershkovich, Whelan, and others from Russian captivity was a remarkable diplomatic achievement, and the Biden administration deserves enormous credit for working with the United States’ allies to make it happen. And full disclosure, this one is personal. Two of the released hostages—Kurmasheva, a journalist with whom I worked for more than a decade at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Kara-Murza, a Russian dissident whom I have known for years—are close personal friends. The fact that sixteen hostages of Putin’s regime—including Americans, Germans, British nationals, and Russian political prisoners—are now free is cause for celebration.

That said, we should all use this occasion to reflect on what this prisoner exchange illustrates about the nature of Putin’s Russia. In order to get these hostages released, the United States and its allies needed to free actual criminals who were convicted after receiving the benefit of due process and fair trials in Western courts of law. Among these were a hitman, Krasikov, convicted of an assassination in Germany, and a cybercriminal, Roman Seleznev, who was convicted of bank fraud and identity theft in the United States. This is reminiscent of the United States securing the release of WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner in exchange for convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout and swapping US Marine Corps veteran Trevor Reed for Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko back in 2022.

One has to wonder, why does Putin want all these hitmen, cybercriminals, arms traffickers, and drug dealers released? And why is he willing to take Western hostages to do so? The answer is simple: The line between the government and the criminal underworld in Putin’s Russia is so thin that it is nonexistent. As I have argued in the past, the Putin regime is effectively a crime syndicate masquerading as a state. The correct metaphor for this prisoner exchange is not the storied Cold War-era swapping of Western and Soviet spies. Instead, it is the result of an unfortunately necessary hostage negotiation with a criminal and terrorist regime.

—Brian Whitmore is a nonresident senior fellow at the Eurasia Center, an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas-Arlington, and host of the Power Vertical podcast.

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Reporters at risk: In honor of Evan Gershkovich

Leading journalists discuss risks facing foreign correspondents, resilience in reporting, and global press freedom.

Civil Society Politics & Diplomacy Resilience Resilience & Society

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Kharlan’s Olympic victory has additional significance for Ukraine as she almost missed out on participating in Paris altogether due to her principled stand over the Russian invasion of her homeland. During the 2023 World Fencing Championship, Kharlan refused to shake hands with a Russian opponent in protest over the war, offering instead to tap blades. The Russian declined this offer and staged a protest of her own, leading to Kharlan’s disqualification and making it virtually impossible for her to take part in the 2024 Olympic Games.

The incident sparked a heated debate over the role of politics in sport and the continued participation of Russian athletes in international events at a time when Russia is conducting Europe’s largest military invasion since World War II. Following a considerable outcry, Kharlan was reinstated and received the personal backing of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, himself a former fencer. Meanwhile, Kharlan’s gesture made her a hero to millions of Ukrainians.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The controversy over Kharlan’s refusal to shake hands with her Russian opponent has been mirrored elsewhere in the sporting arena, highlighting the complex moral issues facing Ukrainian athletes as they compete internationally while their country is fighting for national survival. Ukrainian tennis star Elina Svitolina in particular has attracted headlines for her decision to avoid handshakes with Russian and Belarusian players.

Some critics have accused Ukrainians of politicizing sport, and have argued against holding individual Russians accountable for crimes committed by the Kremlin. Meanwhile, supporters of Ukrainian protest efforts have noted the Kremlin’s frequent use of sport as a propaganda tool, and have also pointed to the often close links between some Russian athletes and the Putin regime.

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For Ukraine’s Olympic team, participation in this year’s Summer Games is an opportunity to provide their war weary compatriots back home with something to cheer, while also reminding the world of Russia’s ongoing invasion. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, many of Ukraine’s Olympic athletes have had to train in exceptionally difficult conditions. Some have been forced to relocate from areas that have fallen under Russian occupation, while all have grown used to the daily trauma of the war and the regular disruption caused by Russian air raids.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics, Olga Kharlan was widely seen as one of Ukraine’s best medal hopes. Born in Mykolaiv, she has been fencing since the age of ten. Prior to the 2024 Olympics, she had already amassed four Olympic medals in a glittering career that has also seen her win six world titles. The thirty-three-year-old Ukrainian star demonstrated her mental strength during the third place playoff in Paris, overcoming South Korea’s Choi Sebin in a dramatic comeback win.

Thanks to her new bronze medal, Kharlan now shares top spot among Ukraine’s leading Olympians with a total of five medals. She claimed her first medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 before securing further honors in 2012 and 2016. However, the Ukrainian star says her success in the French capital stands out. “This medal is totally different,” commented Kharlan in Paris this week. “It’s special because it’s for my country. This is a message to all the world that Ukraine will never give up.”

Mark Temnycky is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jul 25, 2024

Putin is convinced he can outlast the West and win in Ukraine

By Mykola Bielieskov

The West’s collective fear of escalation and reluctance to commit to Ukrainian victory have convinced Putin that he can outlast his opponents and achieve an historic triumph in Ukraine, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Jul 22, 2024

Andriy Yermak: Ukraine and NATO are restoring Europe’s security architecture

By Andriy Yermak

Together with the country’s allies, Ukraine has set out on the path to restore the European security architecture, writes the head of Ukraine’s Office of the President Andriy Yermak.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Jun 12, 2024

Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s growing air strike capabilities are decimating Russian air defenses in Crimea and making the occupation of the peninsula increasingly untenable, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Paris Olympics: Ukrainian dedicates medal to athletes killed by Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

China’s global influence operations have received increasing attention in the national security community. Numerous congressional hearings, media reports, and academic and industry findings have underscored China’s increased use and resourcing of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) tactics in its covert operations both in the United States and abroad.

In response, US government offices the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), the Global Engagement Center (GEC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), among others, have made strides in raising awareness of the issue and charting pathways to increase the resilience of the US information ecosystem to foreign influence. To date, however, the efforts to counter the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been fragmented. That fragmentation is indicative of a lack of cohesion around the concept of influence operations itself.

Across the government and nongovernment sectors alike, there is considerable variation regarding the definition and scope of information manipulation. For example, the Department of State’s (DOS’s) GEC has an expansive definition, which includes “leveraging propaganda and censorship, promoting digital authoritarianism, exploiting international organizations and bilateral partnerships, pairing cooptation and pressure, and exercising control of Chinese-language media.” Others define it more narrowly as disinformation and propaganda spread by a foreign threat actor in a coordinated, inauthentic manner, and largely occurring on social media platforms.

This variation is a reflection of the holistic and multifaceted nature of Chinese influence. Coercive tactics and influence operations have long been a central part of China’s strategic tool kit and core to how it engages with the outside world. Because China conceives of the information domain as a space that must be controlled and dominated to ensure regime survival, information operations are part of a much bigger umbrella of influence that spans the economic, political, and social domains. It may be more useful to think of information manipulation as existing within the broader conceptual framework of China’s weaponization of the information domain in service of its goal to gain global influence.

As previous work by the Digital Forensic Lab (DFRLab) has shown, China’s approach to the information domain is coordinated and proactive, taking into account the mutually constitutive relationships between the economic, industrial, and geopolitical strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The aim of its efforts is to gain influence—or “discourse power”—with the ultimate goal of decentering US power and leadership on the global stage. One of the main mechanisms through which the CCP seeks to achieve this objective is by focusing on the dominance of information ecosystems. This ecosystem encompasses not only narratives and content that appear in traditional and social media but also the digital infrastructure on which communication systems rely, the policies that govern those systems at the international level, and the diplomatic strategy deployed by Beijing’s operatives abroad to gain buy-in for the CCP’s vision of the global order.

The DFRLab’s previous two reports, which explored China’s strategy and the impacts of its operations abroad, found that the United States will not be successful in addressing the challenges of Chinese influence if it sees that influence as separate from the interconnected economic, political, and technical domains in which its strategy is embedded.

To this end, the DFRLab hosted a series of one-on-one expert interviews, conducted research and workshops, and held a virtual roundtable discussion with scholars and practitioners with expertise on or experience in addressing authoritarian influence and information operations, US government processes and policies around these issues, and Chinese foreign policy. This issue brief is part of a larger body of work that examines the Chinese government’s interests and capabilities and the impacts of party’s efforts to shape the global information ecosystem. The focus of this report is on how the US government can best respond to those challenges, including the architecture, tools, and strategies that exist for addressing PRC influence and information manipulation, as well as any potential gaps in the government tool kit.

This report finds that, to mount the most effective response to Chinese influence and the threat it poses to democratic interests at home and on the international stage, the United States should develop a global information strategy, one that reflects the interconnected nature of regulatory, industrial, and diplomatic policies with regard to the information domain. A core assumption undergirding this concept is that US policymaking space tends to over-index on the threat of information manipulation in particular while under-indexing on the core national interest of fostering a secure, interoperable information environment on a larger scale.

The limits of understanding Chinese influence as systemic and part of a broader strategy has sometimes led US response to be pigeonholed as an issue of strategic communications, rather than touching on the information and technology ecosystems, among others, where China focuses its information and influence efforts. Responding to Chinese influence with government messaging is not sufficient to address the complex nature of the challenge and places the United States in a position of reactivity.

In short, understanding that the CCP (1) integrates its tech industrial strategy, governance policy, and engagement strategy and (2) connects its approach at home to how it engages abroad, the United States needs to do the same, commensurate with its values. It should not respond tit-for-tat but rather have a collective strategy for a global competition for information that connects its tech strategy to its governance approach to its engagement around the world.

That is not to say that a US strategy on information resilience should mirror China’s, or that such a strategy should be developed in response to the PRC’s actions in the information domain. Nor is it to say that the United States should adopt a similar whole-of-government approach to the information domain. There are silos by design in the US system and important legal and normative foundations for the clear delineation of mission between them. What this issue brief argues for is a strategic breaking down of silos to facilitate proactive action versus a dangerous breaking down of legally required silos.

This report emphasizes that the United States should articulate how major initiatives like the CHIPS and Science Act, regulatory approaches like the recent executive orders on AI and data security, and the DOS’s recent cyberspace and digital policy strategy are part of a cohesive whole and should be understood and operationalized as such.

The strategy should outline what the United States stands for as much as what it is against. This requires that the United States frame its assessment of threat within a broader strategy of what its values are and how those values should be articulated in its regulatory, strategic, and diplomatic initiatives to promote open information environments and shore up information resilience. This includes working with allies and partners to ensure that a free, open, and interoperable internet is a global priority as well as a domestic one; developing common standards for understanding and thresholding foreign influence; and promoting connectivity at home and abroad. One finding of this report is that the United States is already leaning into its strengths and values, including championing policies that support openness and continuing support for civil society. This, along with the awareness of influence operations as the weaponization of the information domain, is a powerful response to authoritarian attacks on the integrity of both the domestic US and global information spaces.

The United States has a core national security interest in the existence of a rules-based, orderly, and open information environment. Such an environment facilitates the essential day-to-day tasks related to public diplomacy, the basic expression of rights, and investment in industries of strategic and economic value. Absent a coherent strategy on these core issues related to the integrity of the United States’ information environment that is grounded in an understanding of the interconnected nature of their constitutive parts, the challenges of foreign influence and interference will only continue to grow. This issue brief contains three sections. For sections one and two, experts in different aspects of the PRC’s information strategy addressed two to three main questions; during the course of research, further points were raised that are included in the findings. Each section represents a synthesis of the views expressed in response to these questions. The third section comprises recommendations for the US government based on the findings from the first two sections.

Staff

Kenton Thibaut

Senior Resident Fellow, China

Digital Forensic Research Lab Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Disinformation

In-Depth Research & Reports Aug 24, 2022

Chinese discourse power: Ambitions and reality in the digital domain

By Kenton Thibaut

The CCP has embarked on a concerted strategy to gain control over the global digital and information environment. Its goal: create an alternative global order with China at its heart.

China Digital Policy

Report Aug 2, 2023

Chinese discourse power: Capabilities and impact

By Kenton Thibaut

An examination of China’s online and offline channels for the dissemination of “discourse power” and the mechanisms of oversight on which such communications rely.

China Digital Policy

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) has operationalized the study of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and fake news, documenting human rights abuses, and building digital resilience worldwide.

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The post Effective US government strategies to address China’s information influence appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Gershkovich is the first US journalist to be convicted in Russia on charges of espionage since the Cold War. So far, the Russian authorities have not provided any credible evidence to support their accusations. Kurmasheva was convicted on a charge frequently used by the Kremlin to suppress unfavorable reporting on the realities of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The imprisonment of two US journalists marks a new escalation in the Kremlin’s confrontation with the West. Wall Street Journal publisher Almar Latour and editor Emma Tucker released a statement calling Gershkovich’s sentence “a disgraceful, sham conviction.” RFE/RL President and CEO Steve Capus deemed Kurmasheva’s conviction “a mockery of justice.”

US citizens Gershkovich and Kurmasheva are now facing the prospect of long prison sentences in extremely harsh conditions. An AP series published earlier this year described the “physical and psychological pressure, sleep deprivation, insufficient food, heath care that is poor or simply denied” and “dizzying set of arbitrary rules” that the pair are likely to encounter in Russian jails. Both journalists have already spent an extended period in pretrial detention.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The Russian authorities have a long record of targeting journalists. These efforts have gained further momentum since February 2022 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with the Kremlin using draconian new legislation to silence anti-war voices and shut down any remaining independent Russian media outlets. In May 2024, the United Nations human rights office reported that the number of journalists imprisoned in Russia had reached an all-time high.

While the Putin regime is notorious for seeking to censor the media, that may not actually be the main motive in this case. Instead, there has been widespread speculation that the Kremlin ultimately aims to use Gershkovich and Kurmasheva as bargaining chips in negotiations with the US to secure the release of Russian citizens currently serving prison sentences in the West.

Putin is no doubt well aware that the United States will go to considerable lengths to free the two American journalists. Following Gershkovich’s conviction, the White House issued a statement that the US government has “no higher priority” than seeking the release and safe return of Gershkovich “and all Americans wrongly detained and held hostage abroad.”

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Speculation about a potential prisoner swap has swirled ever since Gershkovich was first detained in 2023. Typically, Russia only engages in prisoner exchanges once suspects have been convicted and sentenced. This has led some analysts to suggest that the relative speed of the two recent trials could indicate the Kremlin’s desire to proceed with an exchange in the near future.

Moscow will likely demand a high price for the release of Gershkovich and Kurmasheva. This may include handing over Vadim Krasikov, a Russian secret service colonel who is currently serving a life sentence in Germany for gunning down a Chechen dissident in a Berlin park in 2019. Sentencing Krasikov in 2021, a Berlin court called the killing “a state-ordered murder.”

US Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin said Gershkovich’s trial and conviction were “stark reminders of the lengths to which tyrants like Putin will leverage innocent people as bargaining chips, stifle free speech, and suppress the truth.” While many now expect a prisoner swap to take place sooner rather than later, the targeting of US journalists in this manner highlights the Kremlin’s retreat from international norms and underlines the potential dangers facing any Western nationals who choose to visit Putin’s Russia.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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