In two new PONARS Eurasia Policy Memos, Alexander Sukharenko shows how the Wagner Group’s sending Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine skirts Russian law, risking greater violence in Russian society, and Jean-François Ratelle argues Ramzan Kadyrov’s wartime angling for national-level power weakens his control over Chechnya itself.
 
With both sides framing the war as a battle for survival, Oxana Shevel sees Ukraine eventually winning, though Volodymyr Dubovyk cautions it will not end anytime soon. Brian Taylor similarly expects it to carry on, though at a lower intensity. Mikhail Alexseev finds Russia probing for weak spots by throwing large numbers of troops on the battlefield. Maria Popova adds high Russian casualties could result from ineptitude or indifference, while Arkady Moshes thinks Russia’s lack of progress in Vuhledar could “exacerbate the rivalry between the regular military and the Wagner group” and harm the military effort. Serhiy Kudelia expects pressure to negotiate to increase, while Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe call on Ukraine not to close off the negotiating table. Peter Rutland finds roots of the conflict in Russia’s decades of ever-creeping authoritarianism, nostalgic patriotism, and security officials’ influence.
 
Jessica Pisano describes how Zelensky’s longtime work as a showman laid the conceptual groundwork for the national unity his leadership has helped achieve, while Yuri Zhukov documents that the Ukrainian president more often calls for “victory” when speaking to domestic audiences and “peace” to foreign ones. Olexiy Haran finds Ukraine and Kenya have many collaboration opportunities in textile manufacturing and energy.
 
Elsewhere in the region, Emil Dzhuraev finds Central Asian leaders no longer consider Putin an “invincible leader” that everyone wants to meet. For Azamat Junisbai, Kazakhs had already been slowly ramping up resistance to Russian colonialism, but the full-scale invasion of Ukraine “put this process on steroids.” Similarly, Kornely Kakachia argues “Russia has lost its soft power” in the area, though Nargis Kassenova adds Central Asian states “can’t move out of the region” and need to find a way to live alongside Russia. In Georgia, after protesters forced parliament to drop a controversial “foreign agent law,” Kakachia diagnoses Georgian Dream as “lost tactically now.” Regarding Transnistria, Ryhor Nizhnikau finds its elites are neither interested nor capable of engaging in any military conflict with Chisinau.
 
For Irina Busygina, many Russians are unhappy with the war but do not know how to express their misgivings. Nikolay Petrov finds Oleg Deripaska in “dire straits,” while Richard Arnold sees echoes of imperialism in Kremlin efforts to “commandeer” Cossack commemorations of Bolshevik-era policies. Launching the Russia Program at GW, Marlene Laruelle argues scholars have the duty to rethink Russia’s systemic features and change the lenses applied, and Robert Orttung writes that a realistic picture of Russia’s future must consider the strengths and weaknesses of both the authoritarian state and dissenting individuals.