Russia’s Changing Security Environment

So in your paper, you argue that war in Ukraine has changed the Russian security threat perception, but also has built on something in the Russian strategic culture and the, the way that the Kremlin, and St. Petersburg before, has seen threats emanating from the West.

So could you walk me through of what's historic in the way that Russia sees the world and its relationship with the West, and then what is new that comes as a result of this horrible full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

So first, Sasha, really glad to be here with you.

So I think there are some enduring, well-established drivers of Russian thinking about security, Russian security policy, that transcend regimes, generations, centuries, and a lot of it is really anchored in the geography of the country.

If you think about it, Russia, despite its very large size, originally was very unfortunate with its location deep on the edges of the European continent without ready access to warm water ports.

Sort of isolated from major global, at the time, European centers of civilization, trade, culture, and, you know, the original core Russian state had to fight its way to get to the Black Sea, to get to the Baltic, and it evolved over time into this tug of war between Russia and the major European power of the day, be it Sweden or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or for a long time, the Ottoman Empire, basically bumping up against each other.

And the interesting feature of Russian geography is that if you look at the map, the map between Russia and the rest of Europe is pretty flat.

There are no major geographic features in that terrain that could either contain Russia's westward expansion or, in turn, protect Russia from Western invaders.

So I think that set of circumstances really kind of shaped Russian approach to the rest of Europe, the perception that Russia has to have a significant buffer to absorb the invasion from the West.

And I probably don't need to remind your audience that Russia, in relatively recent memory, suffered two nearly fatal invasions from the West.

In 1812, from Napoleon, and Napoleon ended up in Moscow in just short period, in four months.

Of course, the retreat from Moscow was the real undoing of his empire and of his reign, but that's where strategic depth comes in.

And then, of course, again in 1941, when in less than six months, German armies were at the gates of Moscow.

And had it not been for this great distance, and of course, the Russian climate helped at the time-

The snowstorm.

Yes.

The, the cold, the snow, the bad Russian roads, all that helped to defeat the invaders.

Had it not been the case, then who knows what Russia today would've been like.

And then, of course, in more recent times, Russia has really struggled with what you, I guess, would describe as technological progress.

Since the end of World War II, it's been in this cat and mouse game trying to catch up to US and NATO technologies that fueled the development of NATO and US weapons.

It began with nuclear weapons at the end of World War II.

Russia caught up, but then there was deployment of US medium-range, theater-range nuclear weapons in Europe that put at risk the Russian heartland in a way that Russia could not reciprocate against the United States.

That triggered the deployment to Cuba.

Khrushchev wrote about it in his memoirs.

We know how that ended.