Russia

The Congressional Research Service, a department of the Library of Congress, conducts research and analysis for Congress on a broad range of national and international policy issues. Some of the CRS work is carried out specifically for individual members of Congress or their staff and is confidential. However, there is also much CRS compiled material which is considered public but is not formally published on the CRS website.

For that reason a number of other organisations try to keep track of these publications and make them publicly available via their own websites. Currently, ESO uses the following websites to track these reports and allow access to them in ESO:

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Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

In some cases hyperlinks allows you to access all versions of a report, including the latest. Note that many reports are periodically updated.Vladimir Putin, who was catapulted into the Kremlin following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, was elected President on March 26, 2000 by a solid majority that embraced his military campaign in Chechnya. Parties backing Putin did well in the December 1999 Duma election, giving Putin a stable parliamentary majority as well. Putin has moved to strengthen the central government vis-a-vis regional leaders, to bring TV and radio under tighter state control, and to modernize the armed forces. Federal forces have suppressed large-scale military resistance in Chechnya, but face the prospect of prolonged guerrilla warfare. The economic upturn that began in 1999 is continuing. The GDP and domestic investment are growing after a decade-long decline, inflation is contained, the budget is balanced, and the ruble is stable. Major problems remain: one third of the population live below the official poverty line, foreign investment is very low, crime, corruption, capital flight, and unemployment remain high. Putin appears to seek simultaneously to tighten political control, introduce economic reforms, get major debt forgiveness, and strengthen the military.

Russian foreign policy under Yeltsin had grown more assertive, fuelled in part by frustration over the gap between Russia’s self-image as a world power and its greatly diminished capabilities. Russia’s drive to reassert dominance in and integration of the former Soviet states is most successful with Belarus and Armenia but arouses opposition in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. The CIS as an institution is failing. Washington and Moscow continue to disagree over Russian missile technology and nuclear reactor transfers to Iran, among others. After the September 11 terror attacks, however, Russia has adopted a much more cooperative attitude on many issues.

The military is in turmoil after years of severe force reductions and budget cuts. The armed forces now number about one million, down from 4.3 million Soviet troops in 1986. Weapons procurement is down sharply. Readiness, training, morale, and discipline have suffered. Following the war in Chechnya and strained relations with the West over Kosovo, Putin’s government increased defense spending sharply. There is conflict between the military and the government and within the military over resource allocation, restructuring, and reform.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States sought a cooperative relationship with Moscow and supplied over $4 billion in grant aid to encourage democracy, market reform, and strategic threat reduction in Russia. Early hopes for a close partnership waned, in part because Russians grew disillusioned with perceived U.S. disregard for Russian interests, while Washington grew impatient with Russia’s increasingly adversarial stance on issues in which their interests clash. Direct U.S. foreign aid to Russia, under congressional pressure, fell over the past decade. Indirect U.S. assistance, however, through institutions such as the IMF, is very substantial. The United States has imposed economic sanctions on Russian organizations for exporting military technology and equipment to Iran and Syria. There are more restrictions on aid to Russia in the FY2002 foreign aid bill. In the spirit of cooperation after September 11, however, the two sides have agreed on a strategic nuclear force reduction treaty and a strategic framework for bilateral relations, due to be signed at the Bush-Putin summit, May 23-25, 2002.

• Primary Source

EveryCRSReport.com https://www.everycrsreport.com/

Federation of American Scientists (FAS): Congressional Research Service [CRS] Reports https://fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html

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