Category: Daniel Fried

Five ways the West might increase pressure on the Russian economy

On Wednesday, Russia’s central bank announced new measures to speed up its sale of foreign currency ten-fold to prop up the wobbly ruble. Although the drop in the ruble’s exchange rate since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an imperfect indicator of true financial health, there is no denying that the West’s financial sanctions, export

What Prigozhin’s plane crash tells us about Putin’s Russia

JUST IN The plane was flying northwest, then events went south quickly. On Wednesday, Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin and nine other people were reportedly killed when their aircraft, en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, crashed under mysterious circumstances. In late June, Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny in Russia that involved a convoy of

What’s behind Erdogan’s backing of Sweden’s NATO bid?

JUST IN The wait is (nearly) over. After more than a year of ups and downs since Sweden applied to join NATO in May 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has agreed to back Stockholm’s bid to become the Alliance’s thirty-second member. The announcement came on the eve of the NATO Summit in Vilnius after

Prigozhin walks away. Where does his halted mutiny leave Putin?

JUST IN What’s done cannot be undone. Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin launched a mutiny against the Russian ministry of defense this weekend, taking over the Southern Military District headquarters in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don before turning toward Moscow. Then just as suddenly, he halted his advance without a violent confrontation. Hours after charging

Has Ukraine’s counteroffensive really begun?

JUST IN Will we know it when we see it? Ukrainian forces are probing front lines and attacking multiple Russian positions, even as leaders in Kyiv remain cagey on whether Ukraine’s much-anticipated summer counteroffensive has begun. Russia is sending its own signals. After digging in along the front line, Russian forces have ramped up air