More than 20 months after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the dominant conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin’s autocratic and imperial regime has been isolated and ostracized. Moscow’s relations with the West have been all but severed. Putin’s travel is severely limited due to war crimes indictments. And the Russian economy is cut off from global financial markets due to sanctions.
But the Kremlin leader has several trump cards up his sleeve that he’s been playing to keep global influence – with some measure of success. He’s doubled down on the Sino-Russian partnership to keep the economy afloat. He’s relied on rogue states like North Korea and Iran to provide weapons. And he’s explicitly appealed to the Global South by cynically casting his brutal invasion of Ukraine as an anti-colonial struggle against the West.
On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks to Jeff Mankoff, Distinguished Research Fellow at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies and author of the recently published book Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security, about the geopolitical hand Putin is trying to play. Enjoy…
SHOW NOTES
Jeff Mankoff’s published works can be accessed here and here. His book, Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security, can be purchased here.