US AND RUSSIA

Whilst studying international relations at second year of university, I never learned about the most important relation within the political landscape - that of Russia and America. The relationship between both countries is the worst it has been since 1985. Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and what appears to be its continuing attempts to affect the 2020 election campaign have made Russia a toxic domestic issue in a way that it has not been since the 1950s. 

Russia has supported Syria's Bashar al-Assad in his brutal civil war and for Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, which has raised tensions in the US and Russian relationship. Trump came into office determined to improve ties with Russia but the executive branch and the US Congress have promoted tough policies against Russia, imposing sanctions and expelling diplomats. This relationship is the most important in our political world, with both countries being two nuclear superpowers. Therefore, tensions in the relationship could have disaster consequences.  

The politics of Russia

After the USSR collapsed, the US assumed that once the Russians escaped Soviet communism that they would be a part of the West and become more like Americans. The US even sent political and economic advisers to work with Russian officials to promote democracy. But, a different outcome has emerged. During the 1990s, Russia was a more pluralist society and was humiliated to accept an agenda dictated by the US. 

Under Putin, Russia has become a centralised, authoritarian state and has returned as a global player, competing with the US. Although it is weaker, it has the ability to intervene around the globe and influence US interests. There has been two period where the relation between the two countries could be seen as a positive. One being the post-9/11 period when Russia assisted the US in the first phase of war in Afghanistan, providing information which it had collected from a decade long war there and during the 2008-12 period of the reset between Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. This is when Moscow and Washington cooperated on arms control, Afghanistan, Iran and a range of other issues. 

These relations were put to the test when Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, convinced that Hillary Clinton had been behind the demonstrators who had protested his return to power. The next year, Putin granted asylum to Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who stole millions of classified documents and fled to Russia via Hong Kong. It disregarded Obama's request to return him. Obama then cancelled a joint summit with Putin. 

2016 Presidential Election 

One of the biggest case is the 2016 presidential elections. This further harmed the relationship between the two countries. A dozen Russians were criminally charged with hacking and leaking emails of senior Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign. The cyber attacks by Russia are becoming more and more frequent in recent days and harming relations not just with America but also with other countries. These grand jury indictments were announced by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy US attorney general, at a press conference in Washington. 

Rosenstein said those charged were operatives of the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency. He said they had "corresponded with several Americans through the internet", including an associate of the Trump campaign. Roger Stone, a longtime adviser of Trump, previously acknowledged that he had exchanged messages with one of the online personas accused of being a front for Russian intelligence, but that he denied knowing his true identity. The GRU units are based in Moscow and traditionally charged with deciphering foreign military communications. It has been accused of standing behind Fancy Bear, one of two hacking groups accused of infiltrating US political parties during the 2016 elections. The US has already sanctioned six officers from the GRU leadership, including Igor Korbov, the directorate's head. 

The leaks of these emails threw the Democratic party into turmoil. It resulted in the disclosure of embarrassing internal memos prompting the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairwoman, on the eve of the party's convention in July 2016. US intelligence agencies believed that the accounts were hacked as part of a wide-ranging operation ordered by Putin to damage Clinton's bid for the presidency and assist Trump's campaign. 

The said Russians were also accused of hacking into the computer systems of American state election authorities and of companies that produced software used by states for running elections. The Russians used techniques including "spearphishing" and spying software, before publishing the emails through well-known online accounts including DCLeaks. Rosenstein believes that the Russians had waged an information warfare against the US during the 2016 campaign, with the aim of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general. 

Not only have Russians cyber attacked Democrat emails. Another 13 Russians had been criminally charged for further interfering in the 2016 elections by allegedly posing as Americans to operate bogus social media accounts, buy advertisements and stage political rallies. They stole the identities of real people in the US to post online and built computer systems in the US to hide the Russian origin of their activity. The charges of these incumbents are as far back as 2014 where the defendants conspired together to defraud the US by impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful functions of government through interference with the American electoral processes. One defendant, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, is accused of using companies he controlled to finance the operations against the US. 

Throughout this election, it has further emerged that events were organised by Russians posing as Trump supporters and as groups opposed to Trump such as Black Lives Matter. At one rally in West Palm Beach, a Russian operative is even alleged to have paid Americans to build a cage on a flatbed truck and to have an actor posing as Clinton in a prison uniform stand inside. The Russians are also accused of working to suppress turnout among ethnic minority voters. They allegedly created an Instagram account posing as "Woke Blacks" and prompted the notion that African Americans should not choose Clinton as "the lesser of two devils" against Trump.

Recently, a new report has been released in the US government which goes further than the previous investigations into Russian election interference. It laid out a stunning web of contact between Trump, his top election aides and Russian government officials, in the months leading up to the 2016 election. The Senate intelligence committee identifies Konstantin Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer employed by the GRU to link him to the GRU's hacking of Democratic emails. Kilimnik worked for over a decade in Ukraine with Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager. In 2016, Manafort met with Kilimnik, discussed how Trump might beat Clinton, and gave the Russian spy internal polling data. 

This shows Manafort's willingness to pass confidential material to alleged Moscow agents as a grave threat. Kilimnik can be classified as a cadre of individuals operating outside of the Russian government but who nonetheless implement Kremlin-directed influence operations. The fact that a Republican-controlled Senate panel has established a connection between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence makes it harder to Trump to alleged that the investigation is a hoax or a witch-hunt. Kilimnik and Manafort used burner phones, encrypted chat services and frequently changed email accounts. 

The Senate report also found that the Ritz Carlton in Moscow is a high counterintelligence risk environment. The committee assessed that the hotel has at least one permanent Russian intelligence officer on staff, government surveillance of guests' rooms, and the regular presence of a large number of prostitutes.  Trump stayed in this hotel during a visit to Moscow in November 2013 where he was allegedly filmed in his private suite with two prostitutes. The committee also examined previous trips by Trump to Russia. It says that during a 1996 visit, Trump attended a party for a group of American investors. The party was arranged by David Geovanis, a Moscow-based businessman who the report says has links to the Russian security services. It went on to say that Trump may have begun a brief relationship with a Russian women he met at the Geovanis party. 

This report by the committee has suggested a high level of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian intermediaries. The report says that Trump's close friend Roger Stone was working closely with WikiLeaks in summer 2016. It suggests Stone was briefing Trump in real time, and that the Trump campaign was shaping its messages ahead of releases by WikiLeaks of Democratic emails stolen in Moscow by the GRU. The report states that Stone took action to gain inside knowledge for the campaign and shared his purported knowledge directly with Trump and senior campaign officials. However, it was not able to establish if this was indeed the case. 

This is worrying if we look to the upcoming election in November. A new poll published by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday found that 75% of Americans now expect Russian or other foreign interference in the November election and a diminishing percentage are confident the administration will make "serious efforts" to protect the election from hacking and other external threats. 

Annexation of Ukraine

Tensions further rose in 2014. Following months of popular protest, the pro-Russian Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia and was replaced by a pro-Western government. Shortly after, Russian troops moved in to occupy and annex the Crimean Peninsula, which had been part of Ukraine since 1954, thereby violating the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia, the US, Ukraine and the UK had pledged to uphold Ukraine's territorial integrity. 

During the next few months, the Russian troops moved in to occupy the parts of the Donbas region in the southeastern Ukraine, ousting the legitimate local authorities. Since 2014, Russian and Ukraine have been fighting a war in the Donbas region in which 14,000 people have died. Responding to this violation of sovereignty, the US imposed sanctions on Russian individuals close to Putin and on Russian's ability to access financial markets. 

Syria 

Tensions increased with Russia's entry into the Syrian civil war in 2015 to support Bashar al-Assad. The US supported groups opposed to Assad. Since then, Washington and Moscow have had to deconflict their air operations in Syria to prevent collisions. Washington has given weapons and military training to moderate rebel factions fighting against government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and has provided air support and weapons to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces fighting against ISIS in northern Syria. 

However, Trump announced the unilateral withdrawal of US troops in Syria in December. Therefore, it is unclear what the current position of the US is. Trump's own advisers detracted from his statement over the withdrawal of troops, leaving US allies unclear what the country's exact policy would be. The Trump administration has also given conflicting signals as to whether the US would oppose a peace deal keeping Assad in power. 

On the contrary, Moscow has long backed the Assad regime. It has provided government troops with air support and weapons and given it diplomatic backing at the UN and in international peace talks. While Moscow has said it is targeting IS and other terrorist groups, US officials have repeatedly countered that claim by saying Russian airstrikes are primarily directed against non-IS rebel forces fighting the Assad government. The Kremlin has accused the US of using its campaign against ISIS as a way to slow Russian and Syrian government advances. 

Future of US and Russian relations 

In terms of the future of these relations, it is unclear. The most immediate issue is the new START treaty on strategic offensive weapons, set to expire on February 5, 2021. This is the treaty which was signed by President Richard Nixon in Moscow in 1972 and have for 50 years set limits on the numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles each side can have and they allow for on-site verification to ensure compliance. New START could be extended for another 5 years if the two sides negotiate about what a future treaty that takes into the account the modernisation of nuclear weapons and the growth of cyber capabilities should involve. The Trump administration wants the new treaty to include China. 

Both the US and Russia have pulled out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, therefore, the only remaining piece of arms control is the new START treaty. If this is not extended, then this could be dangerous as by 2021 there will be nothing limiting the nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia which could have serious implications for the proliferation of nuclear weapons and create a costly arms race. Russia's increasingly close relationship with China also represents an ongoing challenge for the US. 

The sanctions against Russia have impacted Russia's economy greatly, but it has not led Russia to moderate its actions in Ukraine or to diminish its cyber interference inside the US. The sanctions such as those on the Nord Steam 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany have adversely impacted US allies but only limited impact on Russia. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has not helped the situation as countries around the world are becoming even more nationalist and embracing their own sovereignty in combating the virus. The situation could have been used to develop a more productive relationship with Russia but it has not. Russia is seeking to create a post-West world where the US is one of many great superpowers and can no longer dominate the international scene. Both countries ultimately have different understandings of the drivers of world politics.