Foreword: The Work of the Kennan Institute Has Never Been More Important

Marking 50 years as America’s leading institution for research and scholarship on Russia and the former Soviet Union is a remarkable achievement. Reaching this milestone against the backdrop of open warfare between Russia and Ukraine—warfare with significant impacts in the immediate region and every corner of the world—demonstrates that the Kennan Institute’s work has never been more important.

An Era-Defining Conflict Brings Era-Defining Impacts

Not long after President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was clear that he unleashed an era-defining conflict. The invasion has displaced more than 10 million Ukrainians, both internally and into neighboring countries. Poland, whose relations with Russia seem to worsen by the day, hosts the most Ukrainians in raw numbers, while Moldova (one of Europe’s poorest countries) hosts the largest number per capita.

While the war is breaking Europe of its established dependence on Russian imports, China, India, and Turkey have quickly moved to become the largest importers of Russian oil and gas.

Nearly one million Russians also fled their homes, fearful they could be forced to become part of Putin’s war machine or face retribution for criticizing Kremlin policy. The flight of young Russians is rapidly becoming the country’s greatest “brain drain” since Soviet Union days. Of the estimated million who have left, nearly 90% are younger than 45 and approximately 80% are college educated.

Putin’s war is also having a significant impact on global food security. Russia and Ukraine are among the world’s largest producers of wheat and together, produce nearly a third of the world’s nitrogen-based fertilizer. In February 2024, NASA’s Global Food Security and Agriculture Consortium, NASA Harvest, reported that in 2023, Ukrainian farmers abandoned approximately 7.5% of the country’s cropland, while Russia’s military campaign increased production costs for Ukrainian farmers and reduced the country’s overall grain exports. Caitlin Welsh of the  Center for Strategic and International Studies opines that the war has caused “the greatest military-related increase in global food insecurity in at least a century.”

The impact on the cost and availability of energy is even greater. In March 2024, Hugo Rojas-Romagosa wrote for the International Monetary Fund that the war had “disrupted the supply of natural gas for many European countries, triggering an energy crisis and affecting energy security.”

It also rapidly changed longstanding energy relationships. While the war is breaking Europe of its established dependence on Russian imports, China, India, and Turkey have quickly moved to become the largest importers of Russian oil and gas. But the most profound impacts of the war are felt by the Ukrainians themselves. Russia’s war atrocities are well-documented—from the systemic “cleansing” of more than 500 residents in the town of Bucha, to the forced displacement of more than 19,000 Ukrainian children. The UN Human Rights Council established an independent commission to document and review thousands of alleged incidents and its findings are painful to read: indiscriminate attacks against innocent civilians, widespread and systemic use of torture, rape and violence, and an overall “profound disregard towards human dignity” by Russian soldiers.

The tragedy of Alexei Navalny’s death reminds us that there is a competing vision for Russia and that Putin fears that vision and those who hold it.

With support from the US and Europe, Ukraine launched its own investigations into more than 120,000 claims. Of these cases, 511 perpetrators have already been identified and 80 convictions imposed—albeit in absentia—in Ukrainian courts. The EU established a center in The Hague to help collect and preserve evidence and provide much-needed funding to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General. In the US, four Russian military personnel have been charged for detaining and torturing an American citizen in Ukraine under our war crimes statute, the first such cases under this law.

Competing Visions of—and for—Russia

Much has been written about what drives Vladimir Putin and his belligerent foreign policy. Some claim that Russia’s declining economic fortunes mean that Putin needs an enemy to blame. In this case, Western institutions that he claims have conspired to keep Russia down. Others argue that Putin’s hold on power is built upon an ideological belief that democracy and market-based economics are creatures of the West and therefore alien to Eurasian culture. Therefore, if any country in the neighborhood becomes a successful capitalist democracy, the flaws in Russia’s autocratic approach become even more glaring. Still others argue that Putin is an unshakeable disciple of the myth of Russian “greatness.” They maintain that his military and economic adventurism is simply part of an ill-conceived drive to reclaim past glory and restore the empire. Putin wants the world to respect Russia and fear Russia. One sad reality of the war is that its brutality is overshadowed by what his country could and should be respected for: centuries of scientific and cultural contributions to civilization.

The tragedy of Alexei Navalny’s death reminds us that there is a competing vision for Russia and that Putin fears that vision and those who hold it. They believe in a Russia that is a modern, thriving democracy, one where corruption and injustice are held in check by limiting the power of officials and eliminating impunity—as Navalny liked to say, “the wonderful Russia of the future.” Opposition leaders and whistleblowers like Sergei Yushenkov, Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Magnitsky, and Boris Nemtsov all championed this future and paid the price with their lives.

The Kennan Institute will analyze every development—bringing its independent, scholarship-driven approach to help us better understand past and current events, which often happen in a whirl, so that world leaders and policymakers can be cleareyed when helping shape and prepare for what lies ahead.

Following an attempt on his life in 2020, Navalny bravely returned to Russia and was immediately detained, tried, and convicted on dubious charges of fraud and embezzlement. In August 2023, he was charged again—this time for funding and promoting “extremism” and was sentenced to another 19 years in prison. From behind bars, Navalny remained a strong voice for the Russian opposition and a force to be reckoned with, a voice that wouldn’t and couldn’t be silenced, even after his transfer to a penal colony in the Arctic Circle.

When the Kremlin staged a faux election to extend Putin’s time as president, despite all the elaborate steps taken to project pro-Putin unity, democracy activists still found subtle ways to show the world that Navalny’s death wouldn’t end their movement. In the words of former Kennan Institute fellow Lucian Kim, who recalled in a tribute to Navalny observations he made while serving as an Moscow-based NPR correspondent a few years ago: “Everywhere I went in Russia, I met people who wanted freedom, peace, and justice. They are still in Russia, and they are still alive.”

Whenever I am asked about Russia’s future, the courage of my friend, Vladimir Kara-Murza comes to mind. Vladimir, a Russian journalist and political activist, was sentenced in April 2023 to 25 years in a Russian prison because he dared to speak out against Putin's war on Ukraine. When presented with his pre-ordained guilty verdict, Kara-Murza said courageously: “I subscribe to every word that I have spoken and every word of which I have been accused by this court. I blame myself for only one thing: that over the years of my political activity, I have not managed to convince enough of my compatriots and enough politicians in the democratic countries of the danger that the current regime in the Kremlin poses for Russia and for the world. Today this is obvious to everyone, but at a terrible price—the price of war.”

Kara-Murza’s refusal to recant or back down is especially courageous because he knows all too well the ruthlessness of Putin’s Kremlin. In both 2015 and 2017, he was poisoned by Kremlin agents, and nearly died as a result.

I first met Kara-Murza in 2015, not long after he emerged from his first coma. Though he was still in the hospital when he learned that the International Republican Institute and its then-chairman John McCain was presenting a posthumous Freedom Award in honor of Kara-Murza’s friend, pro-democracy leader Boris Nemtsov, he insisted on attending the ceremonies honoring Nemtsov’s life and public service. This took extraordinary effort, as he needed a cane to help move his partially paralyzed body any significant distance. His soft and raspy voice demonstrated the lingering effects of the breathing tube needed during his coma.

We chatted privately before the ceremony began, and I asked if there was a message he wanted me to bring to the policymakers and democracy community. Despite his weakness, his eyes burned brightly and he declared, “Never give up on the Russian people. Never give up on the Russian people!” 

I’ve never forgotten his admonition. And as the Kennan Institute marks its 50th anniversary, despite all that has happened in recent years—the atrocities committed in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s brutal repression of critics at home—there are still competing visions for Russia’s future. Vladimir Putin sees a world where Russia’s neighbors bend their knee before Moscow and the West trembles in fear of the Kremlin’s ruthless might. Kara-Murza, on the other hand, sees a world where the Russian people are the center of its power. The clash of these visions has profound implications for Russia, its neighbors, and the world.

The Kennan Institute will analyze every development—bringing its independent, scholarship-driven approach to help us better understand past and current events, which often happen in a whirl, so that world leaders and policymakers can be cleareyed when helping shape and prepare for what lies ahead.

Ambassador Mark A. Green (Retired) is the President and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 2017 to 2020, Green served as administrator of the US Agency for International Development. He also served as President of the International Republican Institute, and Senior Director at the US Global Leadership Coalition. Green served as the US Ambassador to Tanzania from 2007 to 2009, as well as four terms in the US House of Representatives where he represented Wisconsin’s 8th District.

Cover Photo: Monument of Independence of Ukraine in Kiev, May 2018. Historical sights of Ukraine. Shutterstock/MaxxjaNe.