New CNAS Report: Identifying Russian Vulnerabilities and How to Leverage Them

Washington, December 14, 2023 — Today, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released a new report, Identifying Russian Vulnerabilities and How to Leverage Them, by Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Richard Connolly, Siemon Wezeman, Gavin Wilde, Elina Ribakova, Benjamin Hilgenstock, Edward Fishman, Eric Ciaramella, Paul Stronski, Peter Schroeder, and Timothy Frye.

The report consists of ten essays outlining Russia’s most critical vulnerabilities in the defense, economic, diplomatic, and political domains, and provides a roadmap for how the United States and its allies could exploit and leverage these weaknesses. The essays cover topics such as Russia’s defense industry, arms sales, technology and cyber industries, financial sector, reliance on oil and gas, and Ukraine. The report further explores Russia’s declining influence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Russia’s crumbling diplomacy, Russian public opinion and the Putin regime, and Russian emigration.

As one of the authors notes, “The highly personalized, authoritarian regime President Vladimir Putin has constructed over the past 23 years is beset with vulnerabilities that, if subjected to steady and forceful pressure, could give way to new political leadership more amenable to constructive relations with the United States and its allies. More immediately, leveraging these vulnerabilities could help the United States and its allies complicate Russia’s ability to sustain the war in Ukraine and aggression beyond its borders more broadly, and grow the coalition of countries willing and able to oppose such aggression.”

For more information or to schedule an interview with the report authors, please contact Alexa Whaley at  [email protected].