You may not have heard of Yevgeny Primakov. But in Moscow’s corridors of power, his ideas are very much alive — and shaping how Russia is engaging the United States right now. 🧵
As US-Russia talks grind on, one thing is clear: the Kremlin is not looking for a reset. It’s not looking for escalation either. It’s playing for time, leverage, and options. This is classic Primakov doctrine at work: strategic independence and multi-vector diplomacy.
Primakov served as foreign minister and prime minister in the 1990s, under the very pro-American Boris Yeltsin. He wasn’t a romantic about the West. He understood that a unipolar world would always treat Russia as a subordinate. So he proposed a different model: a multipolar order, where Moscow balances power blocs, not joins them.
At the heart of Primakov’s approach: ✉️ Avoid binary alignments ⚖️ Preserve maximum sovereignty 🌐 Cultivate ties with multiple great powers 🤨 Reject ideology in favor of national interest
Sound familiar? It should — it’s back in vogue in Moscow.
Today’s negotiations with Washington reflect this logic. Russia isn’t begging for sanctions relief or threatening a grand bargain. It’s conducting strategic procrastination: waiting out electoral cycles, testing Western unity, and keeping all doors ajar.
At the same time, Moscow is deepening ties with China, hedging with Indiai, and engaging the Global South. But crucially, it avoids formal alliances. No junior partner status. No ideological camps. This is diplomacy in the Primakov mold.
Even BRICS, the SCO, and alternative payment systems trace back to his thinking: global structures that aren’t anti-Western, but post-Western — frameworks that sideline the need for Western approval.
This stands in contrast to older ideas like Surkov’s “Great North” — a failed dream of Russia-West integration. And Gorbachev’s ‘Common European Home.” That world no longer exists. Primakov understood that early.
The current diplomatic posture is not improvisation. It’s strategy. And it means Moscow won’t be pressured into picking sides in a US-China conflict or trading Ukraine for relief. It will maneuver — but only on sovereign terms.
Primakov’s legacy is now embedded in Russia’s foreign policy culture: cautious, multi-directional, sovereign. As the US pushes for deals, it’s confronting a Russia that remembers the 1990s — and refuses to repeat them.
…Far from building a lasting peace, much of USIP’s regular work involves hosting American military leaders to discuss the maintenance of U.S. empire. The USIP regularly publishes articles and podcasts on the importance of increased NATO armaments and the need to increase economic sanctions on U.S. adversaries.
For instance, a recent report from the institute argues in favor of the installation of long-range missiles in Germany. The system is designed to launch nuclear weapons into Russia.
Over the last few years, the USIP has pursued a curious line of advocacy around Afghanistan. After the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the ruling Taliban government rapidly snuffed out widespread poppy cultivation, effectively ending the heroin trade – which had long flourished under local warlords and other allies of the U.S.-backed occupation government.
The end of the heroin trade, however, is strongly opposed by USIP.
The institute has published several reports decrying the end of the trade as dangerous because Afghan farmers are now growing “low-value wheat” and other agricultural products. The new economy, USIP warned in December, may “worsen rural poverty, increase dissatisfaction among landholders and spur political instability.”
“It’s mind-blowing to see the principles of American narco-capitalism stated so plainly,” noted Seth Harp, a journalist who has written extensively about the Afghan conflict. “Fuck food, grow drugs, get rich or die trying.”
President Donald Trump, in a flurry of related executive actions this past week, targeted the USIP for downsizing. In an executive order that called for minimized staffing and administrative efforts to wind down spending at various government-chartered entities, the Trump administration appears to be pushing to reduce or eliminate the entirety of USIP. The order mentions the institute and others, including San Francisco’s Presidio Trust…
Where to find relevant documents, videos, translations, and procurement statistics for the conflict that began with a Russian incursion in February, 2022
On February 24th, 2022, at 5:30 AM Moscow time, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised speech announcing a “special military operation.” Here is that address, with English subtitles:
(Go to original page – link above – to view video – NB)
Minutes later, explosions were recorded in Dnipro, Kharkiv, and other locations across Ukraine. This footage was shot near the Antonov Airport in Kyiv:
(Go to original page – link above – to view video – NB)
Many would call this the beginning of the Ukraine war. Others would say it started weeks, months, years, or even decades earlier. This is why any effort at a “timeline” for this war is controversial.
Academics like Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer would say a disagreement about NATO expansion dating to the early 1990s, before the Soviet collapse, is necessary context. The United States Department of Defense, meanwhile, marks the same date of February 24th, 2022, and specifically Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s order sending 7,000 troops to Europe, as the first event in its “Ukraine Events” timeline.
Both old and new materials appear below, in a collection that as always favors full primary source materials over links. When possible, we’ll provide brief context, with contemporary critics given voice.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive and will be continually updated. If you think we left out something important, we want to hear from you. More to the point, if you think something relevant has been overlooked for a reason, we want to hear that complaint. Please let us know what we missed and send what you have to library@racket.news.
Subscribed
February 9th, 1990
Memorandum of conversation between Secretary of State James Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev. Prepared by the State Department and public via a FOIA address, the heavily redacted document nonetheless contains an oft-cited passage from Baker: “We understand that not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that… not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, James Baker, September 10, 1991 (Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)
Ukraine issues a Declaration of Sovereignty, part of which involves an agreement “not to accept, produce, or acquire nuclear weapons.” It’s the first step to becoming a full non-nuclear weapon state in the Non-Proliferation Treaty some years later. Had it not made this move, Ukraine would have been the third most heavily armed nuclear power in the world. It had 176 long-range ballistic missiles and 42 nuclear bombers containing roughly 1,900 nuclear warheads.
December 1, 1991
Ukrainians overwhelmingly vote for independence in a referendum. The lowest votes are in Sevastopol and Crimea, but even those are majority votes in favor of secession from the USSR. Supreme Soviet Chairman Leonid Kravchuk is elected president.
George H.W. Bush, left, and Leonid Kravchuk (Dirck Halstead/Getty Images)
Ukrainian Independence Referendum – Seventeen Moments In Soviet History
White House staff secretary John Podesta and deputy Todd Stern outline a new two-track policy, one that imagines welcoming former Soviet satellites into NATO without a firm timetable, and a second that creates a “Partnership for Peace” that could include “all European states.” National Security Adviser Anthony Lake explains to Bill Clinton, “All your advisors agree that doing anything at this stage to indicate that NATO’s border will move closer to Russia and Ukraine without at the same time including those two states would have major negative consequences within both.”
Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Secretary of State Warren Christopher and, upon being told about the NATO expansion, reportedly says, “This is genius!” Some reports claim Yeltsin was drunk and misunderstood, believing the “Partnership for Peace” would take place instead of wider NATO growth. Subsequent Russian cables show a different reaction.
President Bill Clintonannounces a new Partnership for Peace, in which NATO membership is open “to all the former Communist states of the Warsaw Pact, along with other non-NATO states.” Asked who is the enemy, he answers, “Well, there will be different enemies.”
The President’s News Conference | The American Presidency Project
Leonid Kravchuk, Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton (Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)
Kravchuk, Yeltsin, and Clinton sign the “Trilateral Statement.” Ukraine surrenders warheads and receives financial compensation from the United States and fuel rods for nuclear power plants from Russia. In return, the U.S. and Russia pledge to “reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate UN Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.”
Between the Baker-Gorbachev discussions about NATO and the later Trilateral Agreement, both Ukrainian and Russian politicians will come to believe they were lied to by American diplomats.
Ukraine adopts a new constitution, breaking from its Soviet legal legacy. It enshrines Ukrainian as the sole state language and outlaws foreign military bases, leaving the status of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, uncertain.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and leaders of 19 NATO countries sign a “Distinctive Partnership” agreement. Kuchma had previously declared that Ukraine made a “strategic choice of integrating in European and Transatlantic structures.” Two NATO officers, one civilian and one military, are stationed in Kyiv, and “the NATO Allies have officially designated the Yavoriv defence training area, west of Lviv, as a [Partnership for Peace] training centre.”
NATO member states and Russia sign the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation. It says NATO is undergoing “a historic transformation — a process that will continue,” in which its “political functions” will expand. New member states will not feature any “threatening build-up of conventional forces” and as matters stood, would seek to avoid “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.”
Russia and Ukraine sign the Black Sea Accords, under which Russia leases the Sevastopol base from Ukraine for 20 years. The status of Crimea, which was given to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in 1954, continues to be a source of tension for some Russians, with nationalist politicians beginning to make demands that it be returned.
50 prominent American policymakers, including Democrats like Bill Bradley and Gary Hart, sign a joint letter to Clinton opposing NATO expansion in favor of preserving the START II denuclearization. “NATO expansion will make it much more difficult to establish the atmosphere of trust required for Moscow to agree to additional transparency measures,” they wrote.
Opposition To Nato Expansion | Arms Control Association
Vladimir Putin, a former first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, is hired to be head of the FSB by Boris Yeltsin. Putin, who helped his former boss Anatoly Sobchak escape corruption charges, makes a name for himself by suppressing investigations of Yeltsin. On March 18, 1999, a video of “a person, resembling [General Prosecutor Yuri] Skuratov” is shown on television cavorting with “two girls of easy behavior.” Putin says Skuratov, who was investigating Yeltsin, must resign.
February 23, 1999
NATO officials after meeting at the Château de Rambouillet in France propose an eponymous peace agreement to Serbia, seeking to end hostilities with Albanian neighbors. It declares that the “use of force in Kosovo shall cease immediately” and explains that a NATO-based authority called KFOR will police the territory of the former Yugoslavia to maintain the peace.
