A successful failure: Russia after Crime(a)

Abstract

Russia has become a very different country since it annexed Crimea three years ago. By breaching international law, its relations with the West are now fraught with tension, even in areas where there was once hope of cooperation. In a bid to reduce its dependence on Europe, Russia has touted its pivot to Asia and its Eurasian Economic Union, but those wheels have been slow to turn. Inside the country, three years of economic stagnation have followed that historic takeover of 2014. Sanctions are biting, and so are low global oil prices. Within the government bureaucracy itself, power struggles are underway: new ideologies and new faces are jostling for prominence. The aim of this book is to provide an analysis of these trends providing a road map for anyone seeking to understand the workings of "post-Crimean" Russia. It includes studies of Russia-West relations, the role of sanctions, Western policy towards Ukraine, anti-Americanism, Russia's military doctrine, the fate of its army’s modernization plans, migration, the increasing "weaponization" of history, and the government's attempts to build a new "Crimean consensus" with Russian society, a reworked social contract emphasizing traditional values and a vastly different understanding of human rights to that in the West.