On Thursday, April 15, the CERES program and Jill Dougherty, adjunct professor and CNN’s former Moscow Bureau Chief, hosted the latest installment of the Journalist Bootcamp series, “U.S.-Russia: Hitting the Guardrails?” Joining the panel discussion and Q&A were renowned journalists Anton Troianovski, Moscow Bureau Chief at The New York Times, and Elena Chernenko, special correspondent at Russia’s Kommersant. The experts assessed the potential explanations for, outcomes of and responses to various issues affecting the US-Russian relationship, from the Biden administration’s SolarWinds sanctions to the war in Ukraine and Navalny incident. During the panel discussion, the speakers also fielded a series of questions on the aforementioned subjects as well as the potential for a more stable or salvageable bilateral relationship. To watch the complete event, please go to our YouTube Channel here. You may read a summary of the event below:
On sanctions, the panelists lamented that even if viewed as continuing the Obama-era policy of being punitive on certain issues while cooperating on others, Biden’s latest sanctions lacked incentives for actionable behavior change that would lead to their removal. The punitive nature of this new round was apparent, as it seemed aimed at Russian society—the main cost of which would be suffered by ordinary Russians—as opposed to the Trump administration’s practice of targeting specific individuals and entities. Meanwhile, the absence of conditions or rewards for compliant Russian behavior, such as in the Kerch Strait Incident, was also not lost on the panelists. They were wary of the notion that these policies could be the pretext for a summit, as little could be gained from one in the Russian calculus, other than that one could take place. The guests were cautious not to speculate the Kremlin’s intent in the troop buildup along the Ukrainian border, but suggested the possibility of saber-rattling as a means to signaling opposition to a perceived patriotic pivot by Zelensky and of testing the Biden administration. The panelists suggested that from a PR perspective the handling of Navalny’s health was an unforced error that was alienating at the international level, though materially the issue was less significant for mainstream Russians.