Sep 12, 2026 · 39 min · 11 segments
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Jiang XueqinHost
Chernomyrdin signed the memo, and for several years, Russia held to it, not perfectly, but substantially.
Vladimir Putin has been President of the Russian Federation for less than a year.
He formally voids the Gor-Chernomyrdin Agreement, publicly, unilaterally, no warning, no negotiation, his stated reasoning, the agreement was never ratified by the state Duma and therefore carries no legal force under Russian constitutional law.
Strategically, it was Putin saying one thing and one thing only, we are no longer playing by your rules.
But here's what happened next, and this is the part that most people get completely wrong.
Putin voided the agreement, but Russia still did not send Iran anything that really mattered.
Russia still had something to lose, so we entered this strange in-between period.
From 2000 to 2022, Russia-Iran relations on paper looked like a real partnership.
There was the S-300 Saga, a contract signed in 2007 for advanced Russian air defense missiles, then canceled in 2010 when Medvedev caved to combine American and Israeli pressure.
In practice, Russia was still playing both sides, still hedging, still holding back the most consequential transfers.
Now, Russia is fully sanctioned, cut off from the swift international banking system, frozen out of the Western financial architecture that Russia had spent 20 years trying to stay connected to.
Russia has nothing left to lose in terms of Western goodwill because the Western world has already removed all of Russia's access to it.
Chernomyrdin signed the memo, and for several years, Russia held to it, not perfectly, but substantially.
Vladimir Putin has been President of the Russian Federation for less than a year.
He formally voids the Gor-Chernomyrdin Agreement, publicly, unilaterally, no warning, no negotiation, his stated reasoning, the agreement was never ratified by the state Duma and therefore carries no legal force under Russian constitutional law.
Strategically, it was Putin saying one thing and one thing only, we are no longer playing by your rules.
But here's what happened next, and this is the part that most people get completely wrong.
Putin voided the agreement, but Russia still did not send Iran anything that really mattered.
Russia still had something to lose, so we entered this strange in-between period.
From 2000 to 2022, Russia-Iran relations on paper looked like a real partnership.
There was the S-300 Saga, a contract signed in 2007 for advanced Russian air defense missiles, then canceled in 2010 when Medvedev caved to combine American and Israeli pressure.
In practice, Russia was still playing both sides, still hedging, still holding back the most consequential transfers.
Now, Russia is fully sanctioned, cut off from the swift international banking system, frozen out of the Western financial architecture that Russia had spent 20 years trying to stay connected to.
Russia has nothing left to lose in terms of Western goodwill because the Western world has already removed all of Russia's access to it.
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