The Waiting Game: Signposts of Russia’s Coming Failure in Africa

BY JOHN J. CHIN, HALEIGH BARTOS AND ALEKSAUNDRA HANDRINOS

Russia has expanded its footprint in Africa in recent years. In the wake of a wave of coups since 2020, Russia used social media disinformation to stoke anti-French sentiment and offer military aid to become the security partner of choice for a number of regimes, most notably the members of the new Sahel Alliance formed in 2023 by juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. By 2024, Russian mercenary forces had established a clear presence in six countries.

As 2025 draws to a close, it is easy to be pessimistic about the future of democracy, counter-terrorism, and Western influence in Africa. In July, French forces withdrew from Senegal, marking the end of France’s permanent military presence in West Africa. French forces had already been kicked out of Mali (August 2022), Burkina Faso (February 2023), Niger (December 2023), Chad (January 2025), and the Ivory Coast (February 2025). France’s new Command for Africa (CPA) only has a military base in Djibouti, and some forces in Gabon have left the continent. Likewise, European-manned UN peacekeepers in Mali left in December 2023, while U.S. forces were forced to withdraw from expensive and recently U.S.-constructed bases in Niger by September 2024.

However, we may already be nearing “peak Russia” in Africa. If it took over a decade for most of the Sahel region to reject Western — and especially French — security assistance amidst rising post-Arab Spring insurgencies, it may take much less time to expose the failure of Russia’s growing mercenary forces in Africa and the costs of relying on Russia as a security guarantor.

Not only have Russian forces proved unable to quell domestic instability in most places they operate, but they have also left a trail of human rights abuses and exacerbated local grievances in the process. Africa is now the global epicenter of jihadist terrorism, accounting for over half of all terrorist casualties globally. With most Western forces expelled, it will become harder over time to blame Western ‘neo-colonial’ failures – above all dependence and alleged exploitation by former Western colonizers – for tomorrow’s sorry state of security.

Russian clients in the region appear shaky. In Mali, an ongoing blockade is threatening stability and testing the staying power of the military junta. Moscow’s image as a credible alternative to Western partners has already suffered. Russia’s popularity in the region will likely continue to drop in coming years as it struggles to resource operations and effectively counter terrorism.

The real question is not whether but how quickly Russia’s weaknesses as a primary security partner will be exposed. With Russia’s economy under pressure and a costly stalemate in Ukraine continuing, how long can Russia’s Africa Corps sustain its efforts? To gain insight into these questions, we briefly survey Russia’s recent growing military footprint in Africa, and then offer policymakers signposts or indicators that Russian forces may be ripe to fail in Africa.

The Evolution of Russia’s Footprint in Africa

Russia’s security influence in Africa has waxed and waned over time. According to our calculations using the formal bilateral influence capacity (FBIC) dataset, the Soviet Union saw its security influence capacity increase mightily during the first three decades of the Cold War. It then declined sharply in the 1980s as Soviet forces were exhausted in Afghanistan and collapsed with the Soviet Union’s implosion in 1991. In the decades since, Russian security influence has partially rebounded (see Figure 1A). By 2024, Russia had the least economic influence capacity in Africa among major powers (see Figure 1). However, Russia and China had the most significant security influence capacity on the continent – a function of arms sales and military aid (FBIC data also underestimates Russian influence due to mercenary deployments).

Russia’s unbalanced engagement in Africa reflects its state capture strategy, whereby regime protection services are offered in exchange for access to illicit markets and natural resources. Whereas China has made significant economic investments in Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative, Russia’s engagement is far more transparently extractive and is a source of revenue. For example, Russia’s exploitation of gold mines, particularly in the Central African Republic (CAR), has helped Moscow weather Western sanctions and help fund its conflict in Ukraine.

The Wagner Group was first observed in eastern Ukraine in 2014, fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists, but its intervention in Africa was still a few years away. Wagner’s initial endeavors into Africa can be traced to the Central African Republic, Libya, and Sudan—conflicts that Moscow exploited to test its reach and capabilities on the continent, starting as early as 2017.

Over the next several years, the Wagner Group made a name for itself as it offered African countries security assistance and an alternative to Western partners (principally France and secondarily the U.S.). Eventually, the Wagner Group grew its clientele to Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, countries fighting extremism that have rebuffed Western assistance in exchange for military support from the Wagner Group and the Africa Corps. Moscow is actively deepening relationships with Chad and Senegal and trying to court other regimes.

After years of denials, in 2023, Putin admitted Wagner forces had operated at Moscow’s behest. The Wagner mutiny in June 2023 and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s subsequent death triggered Wagner’s rebrand and partial replacement with Africa Corps, now supervised by Russian military intelligence, with 70-80% of staff being Wagner veterans. The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria briefly imperiled Russia’s access to the base at Khmeimim in Latakia, which is a crucial refueling hub for Russian supply lines to its forces in Africa, as well as its naval base at Tartus. However, flights resumed last month, and Russia is negotiating to keep access to the two bases.

In 2025, the Russian Wagner Group, or the Africa Corps armed forces are deployed in the CAR, Libya, Sudan, the Sahel Alliance states, and Equatorial Guinea. At the same time, African citizens – motivated by higher pay and bonuses – are being recruited to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

Central African Republic

In the CAR, Russia provided an elite security service to keep the regime of President Faustin-Archange Touadera afloat. Wagner forces waged a violent war that also killed civilians and non-combatants, but entrenched information operations convinced many Central Africans that Russia brought stability and peace. Last December, a bronze statue of now-deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, was unveiled in Bangui. In return, Moscow inserted itself into an illicit fuel supply chain in the CAR and earned practically exclusive rights to the gold mines. Russia was able to extract $2.5 billion from gold mines alone in 2022. This early success led to additional invitations from other actors seeking armed Russian muscle.

Libya

In Libya, the Wagner Group has supported Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA). The Wagner Group, among other ventures, provided intelligence, advised security forces, and helped Haftar build credibility throughout the country—in part, likely because Wagner is behind a massive media effort to glorify him. Earlier this year, Russia transferred military equipment to al-Khadim and Matan al-Sarra bases in Libya when access to its Syrian bases was in doubt. Yet continued Russian access is predicated on the continued power of Libya’s eastern warlord, and would be undermined by moves towards political and national reconciliation.

Sudan

In Sudan, Wagner had trained troops for both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since 2018. After civil war erupted between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, the group initially backed the RSF, which had been instrumental in enabling access to gold mines for smuggling. However, in the spring of 2024, Wagner shifted its support to the SAF in exchange for weapons for the ability to establish a naval base on the geopolitically valuable Red Sea coast. The United States has accused Wagner of avoiding exclusive support and funding both warring groups. In November 2025, the Kremlin announced the suspension of its prior plan for a naval base in Port Sudan due to increasing domestic instability, according to the Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service.

The Sahel Alliance Countries

Since 2020, Russia has continued to ride the populist anti-colonial sentiment that is being driven by “opportunistic illiberal regimes” in the Sahel. In particular, the post-coup regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have used Russian forces as a form of regime-proofing.

Mali. In 2019, Mali’s government signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia, which saw Bamako receive several attack helicopters and weapons as part of the deal, opening the door for Russia’s involvement in the Sahelian nation. Following a coup in 2020, the Wagner Group arrived in Mali at the new junta’s request. Since its arrival, Wagner has built up its presence near the airport in Bamako. By summer 2025, the Wagner Group announced its mission in Mali was coming to an end, as the first Africa Corps units arrived in January 2025 and assumed more responsibilities. Despite keeping the junta afloat, resentment within Mali’s military reportedly grows in part due to preferential treatment for Russian mercenaries. Popular unrest grows at the inability of the Africa Corps to reliably break a terrorist fuel blockade into Bamako in recent months.

Burkina Faso. After coming to power in a September 2022 coup, the new Burkinabe junta leader Ibrahim Traoré’ forced French forces out and hailed Russia as a “strategic ally.” The former junta leader, Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo, had reportedly resisted recommendations to ally with Russia. The first Africa Corps personnel arrived in late 2023. Despite Africa Corps’ presence, terrorist violence has only escalated, with the country becoming the world’s worst-hit country according to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index. Some 60% of the country remains under the control of jihadists, whom some worry may be able to conquer Ouagadougou.

Niger. Following a coup in July 2023, members of Africa Corps deployed in Niger in December 2023, the same month that French forces departed the country. The following year, U.S. forces left Niger after extensive discussions with the junta, leaving behind its $110 million base. After Niger’s junta called for US troops to leave, Russian troops, in low numbers, were deployed in May 2024 to an airbase that previously saw American personnel. Niger now ranks fifth in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, just one spot behind Mali.

Equatorial Guinea

In November 2024, approximately 200 Africa Corps troops deployed to Equatorial Guinea to help defend the regime of long-time personalist strongman Teodoro Obiang. The first public demonstration of Russian military force in the country occurred on 9 May 2025 as part of Victory Day celebrations in Malabo, with over 40 Russian soldiers participating.

Three Signposts for Russia’s Coming Failure in Africa

How will we know when the tide has turned against Russia in Africa? These three signposts will be signals for Western democracies that they may have opportunities to re-engage and seek to restore security cooperation conditional on basic commitments to human rights and democracy.

Signpost 1: Anti-Russian/regime protest and regime change in client states.

Popular support for military rule in the Sahel alliance from Mali to Niger can only decline as these Russian-backed regimes fail to tame the insurgencies that are their raison d’être, continue to perpetrate human rights abuses (and endorse abuses by Russian forces), and refuse to hold elections or return to civilian rule. Despite democratic backsliding in the region, support for democracy continues to be robust across most of Africa. This is unlikely to change. Rising mobilization against repression in the Sahel of the kind seen in Latin America, protesting military abuses during the “dirty wars” in the late 1970s and 1980s, is the first sign of Russian trouble.

These earliest warning signs are already starting to appear. This past April, in the CAR, thousands protestedagainst Touadera’s plans to run for a third presidential term with Wagner backing. Pro-democracy protests broke in Mali this past May, even before the recent blockade has only revealed the growing fecklessness of the Russian-backed junta led by Assimi Goita. Russian-backed regimes may become new targets of Gen Z protests spreading on the continent.

Signpost 2: Russia is asked to draw down troops or is forced to give pressure outside Africa.

This would be a more concrete sign of imminent Russian failure, though whether it occurs voluntarily or is compelled (like the French before them) remains to be seen. The Russian economy may continue to cool in 2026. Given mounting losses in Ukraine and uncertainty over whether U.S.-brokered peace diplomacy will be successful, Russia may be forced to retrench some of its global commitments going forward. This is precisely what happened in the 1980s as Soviet economy faltered and resources were depleted in a stalemated war in Afghanistan; the Soviets were forced to reduce economic and military aid to clients from Angola to Ethiopia.

As the Russian forces’ ruthless image crumbles (as it has recently in Mali), tottering regimes may seek to bring in more Russian forces, not less. That escalatory cycle in the short run cannot and won’t last forever. As the imbalance of power between Moscow and its partners begins to level (at least to some degree), this raises the possibility that various countries, currently in the pocket of Moscow, will become more discriminating in their view of Russian support.

Signpost 3: Openness to Western terms of cooperation increases.

Western setbacks may be temporary, particularly outside the Sahel alliance. Though U.S. forces had to withdraw from Chad briefly in 2024, they returned last September. Some West African littoral countries remain open to cooperation with Western security partners. For example, Nigeria has recently announced that it will seek France’s, not Russia’s, counter-insurgency aid.

Whatever the proximate cause, the Wagner memorial statues will come down eventually, and with them, Russian influence across the continent. The United States and its allies must be patient, but must move quickly when the opportunity presents itself to cooperate with re-democratizing partners. Only once pro-Russian regimes die or show a willingness to reform should a containment strategy in the African Sahel shift to one of active engagement and partnership.

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Zelensky Leaves Washington With Trump’s Security Guarantees, But Are They Enough?

European leaders flanking Zelensky and Trump at the White House. Aaron Schwartz/Consolidated News Photos Pool/EPA

BY SONIA MYCAK

RESEARCH FELLW IN UKRANIAN

STUDIES, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL

UNIVERSITY

The last time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House earlier this year, he was berated by Donald Trump.

On Monday, he returned with European leaders by his side. He emerged with some signs of progress on a peace deal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The presence of the European leaders no doubt had a great impact on the meeting. After Trump’s recent summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, they were concerned he was aligning the United States with the Russian position by supporting Putin’s maximalist demands.

We see from Trump’s statements over the last couple of months, the only pullback from his erratic pronouncements, largely based on Russian disinformation, seems to come when a body politic around him brings him back to a more realistic and informed position. So, this show of European unity was very important.

Security guarantees remain vital

There was considerable progress on one critical part of the negotiations: security guarantees for Ukraine.

It is significant that the US is to be involved in future security guarantees. It was not that long ago Trump was placing all the responsibility on Europe. So, this signals a positive development.

I listened to the briefing Zelensky gave outside the White House in Ukrainian for Ukrainian journalists. He explained it will take time to sort out the details of any future arrangement, as many countries would be involved in Ukraine’s future security guarantees, each with different capabilities to assist. Some would help Ukraine finance their security needs, others could provide military assistance.

Zelensky also emphasised that funding and assistance for the Ukrainian military will be a part of any future security arrangement. This would involve strategic partnerships in development and production, as well as procurement.

Zelensky made a point of this at a news conference in Brussels prior to Monday’s meeting. It is a priority for Ukraine to have a military strong enough to defend itself from future Russian attacks.

Reports also indicate the security guarantees would involve Ukraine buying around US$90 billion (A$138 billion) of US military equipment through its European allies. Zelensky also suggested the possibility of the US buying Ukrainian-made drones in the future.

According to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, there was also discussion about an Article 5-type security guarantee for Ukraine, referring to the part of the NATO treaty that enshrines the principle of collective defence for all members.

However, contrary to popular belief, NATO’s Article 5 does not actually commit members of the alliance to full military intervention if any one member is attacked. It allows NATO states to decide what type of support, if any, to provide. This would not be enough for Ukraine.

Ukraine has already seen the result of a failed security arrangement. In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia guaranteed to respect Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

However, look what happened. Russia invaded in 2014 without any serious consequences, and then launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Given this, any future security guarantee for Ukraine will need to be rigorous. Ukrainians are very cognisant of this.

Loss of Ukrainian territory

Prior to his Alaska summit with Trump, I would have said Putin is not interested in any kind of deal. We saw how in previous meetings in Istanbul, Russia sent low-level delegations, not authorised to make any decisions at all.

However, I think the scenario has changed because, unfortunately, in Alaska, Trump aligned himself with Putin in supporting Russia’s maximalist demands. It’s highly likely Putin now believes he has an advocate for those demands in the White House.

This could mean Putin now perceives there is a realistic chance Russia could secure Donbas, the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

I don’t believe Ukraine would ever agree to any formal or legal recognition of a Russian annexation of Crimea or any of the other four regions that Russia now partly occupies – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Zelensky has been adamant Ukraine would not cede territory to Russia in any peace deal. And he alone cannot make such a decision. Changing any borders would need a referendum and a change to the constitution. This would not be easy to do. For one thing, it’s a very unpopular move. And Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory would not be given a free and fair vote.

Putin’s war against Ukraine is an attempt at illegally appropriating very valuable land. In Alaska, he demanded Russia essentially be gifted the entire regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, including land not currently occupied by the Russian military.

This land has extensive Ukrainian military fortifications. Giving up this territory would leave Ukraine completely exposed to future Russian invasions – the country would effectively have no military protection along its eastern border regions. This would put Russia in a very advantageous position in future plans to regroup and attack again.

Even if Zelensky felt compelled to agree to some kind of temporary occupation and a frozen conflict along the current front lines, I don’t believe Ukraine could give up any land still under Ukrainian control.

In a recent Gallup poll, 69% of Ukrainians favoured a negotiated settlement to the war as soon as possible. In my view, this reflects the fact the United States, under the Trump administration, is proving to be an unreliable partner.

A settlement that rewards Russia for its genocidal war against Ukraine would set a very dangerous precedent, not only for the future of Ukraine but for Europe and the rest of the world.

At recent negotiations between the two sides in Istanbul, the head of the Russian delegation reportedly said “Russia is prepared to fight forever”.

That has not changed, no matter what niceties have occurred between Trump and Putin. They are prepared to continue to fight.

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This Isn’t How Wars Are Ended − A Veteran Diplomat Explains How Trump-Putin Summit Is Amateurish And Politically Driven

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska on Aug. 15, 2025. Here, they arrive for a group photo at the G20 Summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images. Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

BY DONALD HEFLIN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EDWARD R. MURROW

CENTER AND SENIOR FELLOW OF DIPLOMATIC 

PRACTICE, THE FLETCHER SCHOOL, TUFTS UNIVERSITY

A hastily arranged summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is set for Aug. 15, 2025, in Alaska, where the two leaders will discuss a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not attend, barring a last-minute change. The Conversation’s politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed longtime diplomat Donald Heflin, now teaching at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to get his perspective on the unconventional meeting and why it’s likely to produce, as he says, a photograph and a statement, but not a peace deal.

How do wars end?

Wars end for three reasons. One is that both sides get exhausted and decide to make peace. The second, which is more common: One side gets exhausted and raises its hand and says, “Yeah, we’re ready to come to the peace table.”

And then the third is – we’ve seen this happen in the Mideast – outside forces like the U.S. or Europe come in and say, “That’s enough. We’re imposing our will from the outside. You guys stop this.”

What we’ve seen in the Russia-Ukraine situation is neither side has shown a real willingness to go to the conference table and give up territory.

So the fighting continues. And the role that Trump and his administration are playing right now is that third possibility, an outside power comes in and says, “Enough.”

Now you have to look at Russia. Russia is maybe a former superpower, but a power, and it’s got nuclear arms and it’s got a big army. This is not some small, Middle Eastern country that the United States can completely dominate. They’re nearly a peer. So can you really impose your will on them and get them to come to the conference table in seriousness if they don’t want to? I kind of doubt it.

How does this upcoming Trump-Putin meeting fit into the history of peace negotiations?

The analogy a lot of people are using is the Munich Conference in 1938, where Great Britain met with Hitler’s Germany. I don’t like to make comparisons to Nazism or Hitler’s Germany. Those guys started World War II and perpetrated the Holocaust and killed 30 or 40 million people. It’s hard to compare anything to that.

But in diplomatic terms, we go back to 1938. Germany said, “Listen, we have all these German citizens living in this new country of Czechoslovakia. They’re not being treated right. We want them to become part of Germany.” And they were poised to invade.

The prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, went and met with Hitler in Munich and came up with an agreement by which the German parts of Czechoslovakia would become part of Germany. And that would be it. That would be all that Germany would ask for, and the West gave some kind of light security guarantees.

Czechoslovakia wasn’t there. This was a peace imposed on them.

And sure enough, you know, within a year or two, Germany was saying, “No, we want all of Czechoslovakia. And, P.S., we want Poland.” And thus World War II started.

Can you spell out the comparisons further?

Czechoslovakia wasn’t at the table. Ukraine’s not at the table.

Again, I’m not sure I want to compare Putin to Hitler, but he is a strongman authoritarian president with a big military.

Security guarantees were given to Czechoslavakia and not honored. The West gave Ukraine security guarantees when that country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. We told them, “If you’re going to be brave and give up your nuclear weapons, we’ll make sure you’re never invaded.” And they’ve been invaded twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The West didn’t step up.

So history would tell us that the possibilities for a lasting peace coming out of this summit are pretty low.

What kind of expertise is required in negotiating a peace deal?

Here’s what usually happens in most countries that have a big foreign policy or national security establishment, and even in some smaller countries.

The political leaders come up with their policy goal, what they want to achieve.

And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, “This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?”

And then the experts say, “Oh, we do this and we do that, and we’ll assign staff to work it out. We’ll work with our Russian counterparts and try to narrow the issues down, and we’ll come up with numbers and maps.”

With all the replacement of personnel since the inauguration, the U.S. not only has a new group of political appointees – including some, like Marco Rubio, who, generally speaking, know what they’re doing in terms of national security – but also many who don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve also fired the senior level of civil servants and foreign service officers, and a lot of the mid-levels are leaving, so that expertise isn’t there.

That’s a real problem. The U.S. national security establishment is increasingly being run by the B team – at best.

How will this be a problem when Trump meets Putin?

You have two leaders of two big countries like this, they usually don’t meet on a few days’ notice. It would have to be a real crisis.

This meeting could happen two or three weeks from now as easily as it could this week.

And if that happened, you would have a chance to prepare. You’d have a chance to get all kinds of documents in front of the American participants. You would meet with your Russian counterparts. You’d meet with Ukrainian counterparts, maybe some of the Western European countries. And when the two sides sat down at the table, it would be very professional.

They would have very similar briefing papers in front of them. The issues would be narrowed down.

None of that’s going to happen in Alaska. It’s going to be two political leaders meeting and deciding things, often driven by political considerations, but without any real idea of whether they can really be implemented or how they could be implemented.

Could a peace deal possibly be enforced?

Again, the situation is kind of haunted by the West never enforcing security guarantees promised in 1994. So I’m not sure how well this could be enforced.

Historically, Russia and Ukraine were always linked up, and that’s the problem. What’s Putin’s bottom line? Would he give up Crimea? No. Would he give up the part of eastern Ukraine that de facto had been taken over by Russia before this war even started? Probably not. Would he give up what they’ve gained since then? OK, maybe.

Then let’s put ourselves in Ukraine’s shoes. Will they want to give up Crimea? They say, “No.” Do they want to give up any of the eastern part of the country? They say, “No.”

I’m curious what your colleagues in the diplomatic world are saying about this upcoming meeting.

People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable. It will yield some kind of statement and a photo of Trump and Putin shaking hands. There will be people who believe that this will solve the problem. It won’t.

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Sanctioning Ghosts: Why US Plans To Hit Russia With Fresh Economic Penalties Will Have Little Effect

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

BY KEITH A. PREBBLE AND CHAIRMAINE N. WILLIS

One way or other, it looks like Russia could soon be slapped with a fresh round of U.S. sanctions.

On July 23, 2025, a bipartisan push to impose a 500% levy on imports from Russia or any country buying Russian oil was put on hold – but only to allow President Donald Trump’s separate threat of imposing new economic measures to play out first. Trump had previously said he would unilaterally impose new sanctions if President Vladimir Putin failed to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine by a date the U.S. president originally set at Aug. 30, but later indicated would be shorter.

Adjectives such as “harsh,” “punishing” and even “bone-crushing” have been attached to both proposed measures. But what impact will they really have if the threats turn into action?

As experts on economic sanctions, we argue that such efforts are akin to sanctioning ghosts. The reality is the economic relationship between Russia and the U.S. is a shell of its former self, with trade between the two countries down 90% since 2021, the year before the invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia has developed a network of critical partners to support its war effort, including China, Iran and North Korea. While the Russian economy remains challenged to some degree, it has largely weathered the impact of Western sanctions since 2022. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Russia’s economy will grow by 1.5% this year, although inflation appears to remain stubborn.

Challenges to US efforts

Economic sanctions imposed to change the behavior of a target country can range from restrictions on exports and imports to asset freezes, banking restrictions and travel and visa bans. They can be comprehensive, encompassing an entire country’s economy; sectoral – that is, targeting specific economic activity; or directed at specific people and entities.

Talk of new sanctions on Russia represents a turn in strategy for the second Trump administration.

After taking office again in January 2025, Trump took what has widely been seen as a softer line on Russia than the previous president, Joe Biden.

On Feb. 24, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Trump White House did not, for example, announce any new economic sanctions against Russia – the first time the United States had failed to do so on the date since Russia’s invasion.

And while the broad sanctions landscape has remained largely unchanged under the Trump administration – it hasn’t relaxed any of those imposed on Russia under Biden – the ability to impose additional penalties may be impacted by other actions and changes in approach.

For one thing, the State Department – one of three main departments responsible for sanctions – has shed nearly 3,000 employees as part of Trump’s mass layoffs of federal workers. That loss of expertise could make it difficult for the U.S. to wield its economic power against Russia.

The U.S. has also been less willing to work multilaterally with other countries. Not only has the Trump administration shown a willingness to shut out Ukraine and European allies in peace negotiations, but it has also been less willing to adapt its sanctions to better coordinate with the European Union. The bloc, for example, recently unveiled its 18th package of economic sanctions against Russia on its own, after the U.S. declined to join the bloc in lowering the price cap on Russian oil.

More harm than good?

While EU and U.K. efforts seek to bolster the existing sanctions regime, the proposals currently being looked at in the U.S. could do more harm than good.

The legislation pending before Congress includes what sanctions experts call secondary sanctions. Those are imposed on a sanctioned nation’s trading partners.

While the Senate has, for now, stepped back from its threats to legislate new sanctions against Russia, the Trump administration has threatened both tariffs on Russia and secondary tariffs on nations that continue to trade with Russia.

These measures could be diplomatically challenging as Trump negotiates trade deals with India and China – two of Russia’s key trading partners. Such actions by the Trump administration raise the prospect of retaliatory measures against the U.S.

Also, any additional sanctions and tariffs could be disruptive to a global economy already jittery from Trump’s on-off tariffs.

Less trade = less influence

A problem with lengthy sanctions regimes is that as trade diminishes, they tend to become less effective. As economist Albert Hirschman argued in his seminal work on trade and power, trade is both a means of acquiring power as well as a source of power that can be wielded coercively.

U.S. trade with Russia has fallen significantly – from US$38 billion in 2021 to just under $4 billion in 2024. U.S. exports to Russia and imports from Russia have declined precipitously since 2021, down 73% and 51%, respectively.

As trade links between the two nations decline, the United States’ ability to coerce through trade diminishes significantly.

While the Trump administration has not announced any definitive sanctions against Russia, talk of even a “100% tariff” is unlikely to harm the Russian economy, since it currently exports so little to the U.S. In 2024, this amounted to $3 billion – a nearly 90% decline in trade since 2021.

As such, new tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. economy are unlikely to push Putin to the negotiating table.

The warnings of many economists over the impact of tariffs bears repeating here: Tariffs are taxes. And the costs of those taxes are borne by firms importing foreign goods into the U.S., not the Kremlin, who then pass the costs onto consumers and other businesses purchasing those goods.

Data from the United Nations Comtrade database shows that the top Russian export to the U.S. in 2024 was fertilizer. Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia was the largest exporter of fertilizers globally – with China and Canada second and third, respectively. Further tariffs on Russian fertilizer are not likely to be welcome by U.S. farmers already suffering from the higher costs of imports elsewhere.

Meanwhile, U.S. exports to Russia have fallen sharply since 2021 and are now a mere fraction of the levels four years ago. Since then, Russia has replaced Western trade with that of other countries, mainly developing economies, or has simply avoided sanctions by routing goods through third-party states.

Moscow’s network of friends

Looking at Russia’s network of trading relationships is key to understanding when sanctions work and when they don’t. We argue that sanctions’ limited impact on the Russian economy is largely due to the Kremlin’s ability to find trading partners willing to ignore the United States’ and other countries’ sanctions.

China, Turkey, Germany, India and Italy export significant amounts to Russia. Meanwhile China, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Brazil remain critical markets for Russian goods.

And North Korea, along with providing Russia with manpower on the front lines, has also pledged to expand its economic cooperation with Russia.

For its part, China’s trade with Russia appears to be increasing despite the two countries’ complicated history.

A key catalyst for China-Russia economic cooperation has been the Trump administration’s tariffs. Both countries have long aimed to supplant the U.S.-led liberal world order, and the notion of a new world order has only gained support among members and prospective members of the BRICS bloc of low- and middle-income nations, of which China and Russia are a part.

The outlook for US sanctions

The decline in trade between the U.S. and Russia means that tariffs are, in our opinion, a nonstarter if Washington is truly looking for a measure to push Putin toward a ceasefire. And secondary tariffs against Russia’s trading partners have the potential to harm U.S. consumers and businesses.

As such, we believe that sanctions – either through Congress or the White House – will do little to alter the course of the Ukraine-Russia war, or advance Trump’s longed-for peace deal.

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Universities In Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union Thought Giving In To Government Demands Would Save Their Independence

Students and other Nazi supporters gather at Humboldt University in Berlin in 1933. AP Photo

BY IVETA SILOVA

PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE 

AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION,

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Many American universities, widely seen globally as beacons of academic integrity and free speech, are giving in to demands from the Trump administration, which has been targeting academia since it took office.

In one of his first acts, President Donald Trump branded diversity, equity and inclusion programs as discriminatory. His administration also launched federal investigations into more than 50 universities, from smaller regional schools such as Grand Valley State University in Michigan and the New England College of Optometry in Massachusetts to elite private universities such as Harvard and Yale.

Trump ramped up the pressure by threatening university research funding and targeting specific schools. In one example, the Trump administration revoked US$400 million in grants to Columbia University over its alleged failures to curb antisemitic harassment on campus. The school later agreed to most of Trump’s demands, from tightening student protest policies to placing an entire academic department under administrative oversight – though the funding remains frozen.

Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania have also recently had grants frozen. Harvard was sent a list of demands in order to keep $9 billion in federal funding.

Now, across the United States, many universities are trying to avoid being Trump’s next target. Administrators are dismantling DEI initiatives – closing and rebranding offices, eliminating positions, revising training programs and sanitizing diversity statements – while professors are preemptively self-censoring.

Not all institutions are complying. Some schools, such as Wesleyan, have refused to abandon their diversity principles. And organizations including the American Association of University Professors have filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders, arguing they violate academic freedom and the First Amendment.

But these remain exceptions, as the broader trend leans toward institutional caution and retreat.

As a scholar of comparative and international education, I study how academic institutions respond to authoritarian pressure – across political systems, cultural contexts and historical moments. While some universities may believe that compliance with the administration will protect their funding and independence, a few historical parallels suggest otherwise.

German universities: A lesson

In the 1975 book “The Abuse of Learning: The Failure of German Universities,” historian Frederic Lilge chronicles how German universities, which entered the 20th century in a golden age of global intellectual influence, did not resist the Nazi regime but instead adapted to it.

Even before seizing national power in 1933, the Nazi Party was closely monitoring German universities through nationalist student groups and sympathetic faculty, flagging professors deemed politically unreliable – particularly Jews, Marxists, liberals and pacifists.

After Hitler took office in 1933, his regime moved swiftly to purge academic institutions of Jews and political opponents. The 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service mandated the firing of Jewish and other “non-Aryan” professors and members of the faculty deemed politically suspect.

Soon after, professors were required to swear loyalty to Hitler, curricula were overhauled to emphasize “national defense” and “racial science” – a pseudoscientific framework used to justify antisemitism and Aryan supremacy – and entire departments were restructured to serve Nazi ideology.

Some institutions, such as the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, even rushed to honor Hitler with an honorary doctorate within weeks of his rise to power. He declined the offer, though the gesture signaled the university’s eagerness to align with the regime. Professional associations, such as the Association of German Universities, stayed silent, ignoring key opportunities to resist before universities lost their autonomy and became subservient to the Nazi state.

As linguist Max Weinreich wrote in his 1999 book “Hitler’s Professors,” many academics didn’t just comply, they enabled the regime by reshaping their research. This legitimized state doctrine, helping build the intellectual framework of the regime.

A few academics resisted and were dismissed, exiled or executed. Most did not.

The transformation of German academia was not a slow drift but a swift and systemic overhaul. But what made Hitler’s orders stick was the eagerness of many academic leaders to comply, justify and normalize the new order. Each decision – each erased name, each revised syllabus, each closed program and department – was framed as necessary, even patriotic. Within a few years, German universities no longer served knowledge – they served power.

It would take more than a decade after the war, through denazification, reinvestment and international reintegration, for West German universities to begin regaining their intellectual standing and academic credibility.

USSR and fascist Italy suffer similar fate

Other countries that have fallen under authoritarian regimes followed similar trajectories.

In fascist Italy, the shift began not with violence but with a signature. In 1931, the Mussolini regime required all university professors to swear an oath of loyalty to the state. Out of more than 1,200, only 12 refused.

Many justified their compliance by insisting the oath had no bearing on their teaching or research. But by publicly affirming loyalty and offering no organized resistance, the academic community signaled its willingness to accommodate the regime. This lack of opposition allowed the fascist government to tighten control over universities and use them to advance its ideological agenda.

In the Soviet Union, this control was not limited to symbolic gestures – it reshaped the entire academic system.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks oscillated between wanting to abolish universities as “feudal relics” and repurposing them to serve a socialist state, as historians John Connelly and Michael Grüttner explain in their book “Universities Under Dictatorship.” Ultimately, they chose the latter, remaking universities as instruments of ideological education and technical training, tightly aligned with Marxist-Leninist goals.

Under Josef Stalin, academic survival depended less on scholarly merit than on conformity to official doctrine. Dissenting scholars were purged or exiled, history was rewritten to glorify the Communist Party, and entire disciplines such as genetics were reshaped to fit political orthodoxy.

This model was exported across Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold War. In East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland, ministries dictated curricula, Marxism-Leninism became mandatory across disciplines, and admissions were reengineered to favor students from loyalist backgrounds. In some contexts, adherents to older intellectual traditions pushed back, especially in Poland, where resistance slowed though could not prevent the imposition of ideological control.

By the early 1950s, universities across the region had become what Connelly calls “captive institutions,” stripped of independence and recast to serve the state.

A more recent example is Turkey, where, following the failed 2016 coup, more than 6,000 academics were dismissed, universities were shuttered and research deemed “subversive” was banned.

History’s warning

The Trump administration’s early and direct intervention into higher education governance echoes historical attempts to bring universities under state influence or control.

The administration says it is doing so to eradicate “discrimatory” DEI policies and fight what it sees as antisemitism on college campuses. But by withholding federal funding, the administration is also trying to force universities into ideological conformity – by dictating whose knowledge counts but also whose presence and perspectives are permissible on campus.

Columbia’s reaction to Trump’s demands sent a clear message: Resistance is risky, but compliance may be rewarded – though the $400 million has yet to be restored. The speed and scope of its concessions set a precedent, signaling to other universities that avoiding political fallout now may mean rewriting policies, reshaping departments and retreating from controversy, perhaps before anyone even asks.

The Trump administration has already moved on to other universities, including the University of Pennsylvania over its transgender policies, Princeton for its climate programs and Harvard over alleged antisemitism. The question is which school is next.

The Department of Education has launched investigations into over 50 institutions, accusing them of using “racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities.” How these institutions choose to respond may determine whether higher education remains a space for open inquiry.

The pressure to conform is not just financial – it is also cultural. Faculty at some institutions are being advised not to use “DEI” in emails and public communication, with warnings to not be a target. Academics are removing pronouns from their email signatures and asking their students to comply, too. I’ve been on the receiving end of those warnings, and so have my counterparts at other institutions. And students on visas are being warned not to travel outside the U.S. after several were deported or denied reentry due to alleged involvement in protests.

Meanwhile, people inside and outside academia are combing websites, syllabi, presentations and public writing in search of what they consider ideological infractions. This type of peer surveillance can reward silence, incentivize erasure and turn institutions against their own.

When universities start regulating not just what they say but what they teach, support and stand for – driven by fear rather than principle – they are no longer just reacting to political threats, they are internalizing them. And as history has shown, that may mark the beginning of the end of their academic independence.

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Africans Recruited To Work In Russia Say They Were Duped Into Building Drones For Use In Ukraine

FILE – This undated photograph released by the Ukrainian military shows the wreckage of a Russian-fired Shahed drone that it said was downed near Kupiansk, Ukraine. (Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate via AP, File)

BY EMMA BURROWS AND LORI HINNANT

The social media ads promised the young African women a free plane ticket, money and a faraway adventure in Europe. Just complete a computer game and a 100-word Russian vocabulary test.

But instead of a work-study program in fields like hospitality and catering, some of them learned only after arriving on the steppes of Russia’s Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.

In interviews with The Associated Press, some of the women complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching.

To fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia, the Kremlin has been recruiting women aged 18-22 from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.

That has put some of Moscow’s key weapons production in the inexperienced hands of about 200 African women who are working alongside Russian vocational students as young as 16 in the plant in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow, according to an AP investigation of the industrial complex.

“I don’t really know how to make drones,” said one African woman who had abandoned a job at home and took the Russian offer.

The AP analyzed satellite images of the complex and its internal documents, spoke to a half-dozen African women who ended up there, and tracked down hundreds of videos in the online recruiting program dubbed “Alabuga Start” to piece together life at the plant.
A hopeful journey from Africa leads to ‘a trap’

The woman who agreed to work in Russia excitedly documented her journey, taking selfies at the airport and shooting video of her airline meal and of the in-flight map, focusing on the word “Europe” and pointing to it with her long, manicured nails.

When she arrived in Alabuga, however, she soon learned what she would be doing and realized it was “a trap.”

“The company is all about making drones. Nothing else,” said the woman, who assembled airframes. “I regret and I curse the day I started making all those things.”

One possible clue about what was in store for the applicants was their vocabulary test that included words like “factory” and the verbs “to hook” and “to unhook.”

The workers were under constant surveillance in their dorms and at work, the hours were long and the pay was less than she expected — details corroborated by three other women interviewed by AP, which is not identifying them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.

Factory management apparently tries to discourage the African women from leaving, and although some reportedly have left or found work elsewhere in Russia, AP was unable to verify that independently.

A drone factory grows in Tatarstan

Russia and Iran signed a $1.7 billion deal in 2022, after President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine, and Moscow began using Iranian imports of the unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in battle later that year.

The Alabuga Special Economic Zone was set up in 2006 to attract businesses and investment to Tatarstan. It expanded rapidly after the invasion and parts switched to military production, adding or renovating new buildings, according to satellite images.

Although some private companies still operate there, the plant is referred to as “Alabuga” in leaked documents that detail contracts between Russia and Iran.

The Shahed-136 drones were first shipped disassembled to Russia, but production has shifted to Alabuga and possibly another factory. Alabuga now is Russia’s main plant for making the one-way, exploding drones, with plans to produce 6,000 of them a year by 2025, according to the leaked documents and the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

That target is now ahead of schedule, with Alabuga building 4,500, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who works at the institute.

Finding workers was a problem. With unemployment at record lows and many Russians already working in military industries, fighting in Ukraine or having fled abroad, plant officials turned to using vocational students and cheap foreign labor.

Alabuga is the only Russian production facility that recruits women from Africa, Asia and South America to make weapons according to experts and the AP investigation.

About 90% of the foreign women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work on making drones, particularly the parts “that don’t require much skill,” he said.

Documents leaked last year and verified by Albright and another drone expert detail the workforce growing from just under 900 people in 2023 to plans for over 2,600 in 2025. They show that foreign women largely assemble the drones, use chemicals and paint them.

In the first half of this year, 182 women were recruited, largely from Central and East African countries, according to a Facebook page promoting the Alabuga Start program. It also recruits in South America and Asia “to help ladies to start their career.”

Officials held recruiting events in Uganda, and tried to recruit from its orphanages, according to messages on Alabuga’s Telegram channel. Russian officials have also visited more than 26 embassies in Moscow to push the program.

The campaign gave no reasons why it doesn’t seek older women or men, but some analysts suggest officials could believe young women are easier to control. One of the leaked documents shows the assembly lines are segregated and uses a derogatory term referring to the African workers.

The factory also draws workers from Alabuga Polytechnic, a nearby vocational boarding school for Russians age 16-18 and Central Asians age 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production. According to investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.

Surveillance, caustic chemicals — and a Ukrainian attack

The foreign workers travel by bus from their living quarters to the factory, passing multiple security checkpoints after a license plate scan, while other vehicles are stopped for more stringent checks, according to the woman who assembles drones.

They share dormitories and kitchens that are “guarded around the clock,” social media posts say. Entry is controlled via facial recognition, and recruits are watched on surveillance cameras. Pets, alcohol and drugs are not allowed.

The foreigners receive local SIM cards for their phones upon arrival but are forbidden from bringing them into the factory, which is considered a sensitive military site.

One woman said she could only talk to an AP reporter with her manager’s permission, another said her “messages are monitored,” a third said workers are told not to talk to outsiders about their work, and a fourth said managers encouraged them to inform on co-workers.

The airframe worker told AP the recruits are taught how to assemble the drones and coat them with a caustic substance with the consistency of yogurt.

Many workers lack protective gear, she said, adding that the chemicals made her face feel like it was being pricked with tiny needles, and “small holes” appeared on her cheeks, making them itch severely.

“My God, I could scratch myself! I could never get tired of scratching myself,” she said.

“A lot of girls are suffering,” she added. A video shared with AP showed another woman wearing an Alabuga uniform with her face similarly affected.

Although AP could not determine what the chemicals were, drone expert Fabian Hinz of the International Institute for Strategic Studies confirmed that caustic substances are used in their manufacture.

In addition to dangers from chemicals, the complex itself was hit by a Ukrainian drone in April, injuring at least 12 people. A video it posted on social media showed a Kenyan woman calling the attackers “barbarians” who “wanted to intimidate us.”

“They did not succeed,” she said.

Workers ‘maltreated like donkeys’

Although one woman said she loved working at Alabuga because she was well-paid and enjoyed meeting new people and experiencing a different culture, most interviewed by AP disagreed about the size of the compensation and suggested that life there did not meet their expectations.

The program initially promised recruits $700 a month, but later social media posts put it at “over $500.”

The airframe assembly worker said the cost of their accommodation, airfare, medical care and Russian-language classes were deducted from her salary, and she struggled to pay for basics like bus fare with the remainder.

The African women are “maltreated like donkeys, being slaved,” she said, indicating banking sanctions on Russia made it difficult to send money home. But another factory worker said she was able to send up to $150 a month to her family.

Four of the women described long shifts of up to 12 hours, with haphazard days off. Still, two of these who said they worked in the kitchen added they were willing to tolerate the pay if they could support their families.

The wages apparently are affecting morale, according to plant documents, with managers urging that the foreign workers be replaced with Russian-speaking staff because “candidates are refusing the low salary.”

Russian and Central Asian students at Alabuga Polytechnic are allowed visits home, social media posts suggest. Independent Russian media reported that these vocational students who want to quit the program have been told they must repay tuition costs.

AP contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and the offices of Tatarstan Gov. Rustam Minnikhanov and Alabuga Special Economic Zone Director General Timur Shagivaleev for a response to the women’s complaints but received no reply.

Human rights organizations contacted by AP said they were unaware of what was happening at the factory, although it sounded consistent with other actions by Russia. Human Rights Watch said Russia is actively recruiting foreigners from Africa and India to support its war in Ukraine by promising lucrative jobs without fully explaining the nature of the work.

Russia’s actions “could potentially fulfill the criteria of trafficking if the recruitment is fraudulent and the purpose is exploitation,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, noting that Moscow is a party to the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.

The AP contacted governments of 22 countries whose citizens Alabuga said it had recruited for the program. Most didn’t answer or said they would look into it.

Betty Amongi, Uganda’s Minister for Gender, Labour and Social Development, told AP that her ministry raised concerns with its embassy in Moscow about the Alabuga recruiting effort, particularly over the age of the women, because “female migrant workers are the most vulnerable category.”

The ministry said it wanted to ensure the women “do not end up in exploitative employment,” and needed to know who would be responsible for the welfare of the Ugandan women while in Russia. Alabuga’s Facebook page said 46 Ugandan women were at the complex, although Amongi had said there were none.

How accurate are the drones?

Bolstered by the foreign recruits, Russia has vastly increased the number of drones it can fire at Ukraine.

Nearly 4,000 were launched at Ukraine from the start of the war in February 2022 through 2023, Albright’s organization said. In the first seven months of this year, Russia launched nearly twice that.

Although the Alabuga plant’s production target is ahead of schedule, there are questions about the quality of the drones and whether manufacturing problems due to the unskilled labor force are causing malfunctions. Some experts also point to Russia’s switching to other materials from the original Iranian design as a sign of problems.

An AP analysis of about 2,000 Shahed attacks documented by Ukraine’s military since July 29 shows that about 95% of the drones hit no discernible target. Instead, they fall into Ukraine’s rivers and fields, stray into NATO-member Latvia and come down in Russia or ally Belarus.

Before July, about 14% of Shaheds hit their targets in Ukraine, according to data analyzed by Albright’s team.

The large failure rate could be due to Ukraine’s improved air defenses, although Albright said it also could be because of the low-skilled workforce in which “poor craftsmanship is seeping in,” he said.

Another factor could be because Russia is using a Shahed variant that doesn’t carry a warhead of 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives. Moscow could be launching these dummy drones to overwhelm air defenses and force Ukraine to waste ammunition, allowing other UAVs to hit targets.

Tourism, paintball games and a pitch on TikTok

The Alabuga Start recruiting drive relies on a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women visiting Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports.

The videos show them working — smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.

One video depicts the Polytechnic school students in team-building exercises such as paintball matches, even showing the losing side — labeled as “fascists” — digging trenches or being shot with the recreational weapons at close range.

“We are taught patriotism. This unites us. We are ready to repel any provocation,” one student says.

The videos on Alabuga’s social media pages don’t mention the plant’s role at the heart of Russian drone production, but the Special Economic Zone is more open with Russian media.

Konstantin Spiridonov, deputy director of a company that made drones for civilian use before the war, gave a video tour of an Alabuga assembly line in March to a Russian blogger. Pointing out young African women, he did not explicitly link the drones to the war but noted their production is now “very relevant” for Russia.

Alabuga Start’s social media pages are filled with comments from Africans begging for work and saying they applied but have yet to receive an answer.

The program was promoted by education ministries in Uganda and Ethiopia, as well as in African media that portrays it as a way to make money and learn new skills.

Initially advertised as a work-study program, Alabuga Start in recent months is more direct about what it offers foreigners, insisting on newer posts that “is NOT an educational programme,” although one of them still shows young women in plaid school uniforms.

When Sierra Leone Ambassador Mohamed Yongawo visited in May and met with five participants from his country, he appeared to believe it was a study program.

“It would be great if we had 30 students from Sierra Leone studying at Alabuga,” he said afterward.

Last month, the Alabuga Start social media site said it was “excited to announce that our audience has grown significantly!”

That could be due to its hiring of influencers, including Bassie, a South African with almost 800,000 TikTok and Instagram followers. She did not respond to an AP request for comment.

The program, she said, was an easy way to make money, encouraging followers to share her post with job-seeking friends so they could contact Alabuga.

“Where they lack in labor,” she said, “that’s where you come in.”

Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker in Washington and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

How Russia Employs ‘Hard Soft Power’ To Influence Overseas Media And Sow Dissent And Fear Among Foreign Populations

BY CATHERINE LUTHER AND BRANDON PRINS

Public diplomacy – the art of rallying a foreign audience behind a nation’s interests – used to be about attracting support through charm, values and cultural exports. It is what political scientist Joseph Nye first referred to as “soft power.”

But our peer-reviewed study of Russian attempts to use foreign media as a diplomacy tool in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 highlights that the art has been adapted into what we call “hard soft power.”

Under this form of public diplomacy, governments mix in subtle threats to make the citizens of targeted countries feel unsafe. The overarching goals of such a strategy are to sow or exacerbate existing divisions, promote social chaos and extend the geopolitical reach of the responsible country.

Our study explored Russia’s use of hard soft power to win over Russian-speaking populations in the former Soviet countries of Ukraine and Georgia, while undermining democratic institutions and social trust in the United States and its NATO allies.

A content analysis of over 2,700 news stories from media sources from February to July 2021 showed that the Russian-language media based in Georgia and Ukraine consistently presented anti-Western narratives. The prominent framing included portraying NATO and the European Union as being existential threats to both countries.

These findings correspond with the Vladimir Putin-era expansion of Russia’s global news media networks, including RT, formerly Russia Today, and Sputnik, designed to influence populations and media outside of Russia. The results of the study also reflect the close ties that exist between the Kremlin and pro-Russian politicians or local business tycoons who run pro-Russian news media outlets.

Russia’s hard soft power could be considered as forming part of Russia’s “gray zone” tactics, which entail a broader range of coercive or manipulative activities, such as the issuing of false narratives and altering images.

It also complements Russia’s hard power – the use of military and economic measures to exert pressure on other countries.

Russian-speaking populations in former Soviet countries have been especially targeted by the Kremlin’s soft power campaigns in the post-Soviet years. This tactic aligns with Moscow’s goal of nurturing the allegiances of Russian diasporas and strengthening the idea of a “Russian World” or “Russkiy Mir.”

As countries bordering Russia, both Georgia and Ukraine have been targets of Moscow’s soft power diplomacy as well as its military aggression. During the period of our survey, Russia conducted a precursory buildup of its military forces in Crimea and around the eastern border of Ukraine, prior to the full invasion of February 2022.

Our study found that during this period, a narrative emerged among Russia-based media, local Ukrainian media and local Georgian media that emphasized Russia’s capacity to defy the military might of Western countries.

Why it matters

Our research illustrates how domestic media can be used as a tool in Russia’s propaganda playbook.

As the U.S. approaches the presidential election, the Kremlin and its proxies appear once again to be amplifying narratives around hot-button issues such as immigration, race and the Ukraine War. On Sept. 5, 2024, U.S. prosecutors indicted two Russian media executives over the secret funding of right-wing Americans to churn out videos to further Moscow interests in “amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition.”

While Russia has been the main country engaging in propaganda and disinformation campaigns, evidence exists that China and Iran have joined in such malign efforts.

What still isn’t known

Despite investments by countries such as Russia in hard soft power techniques, the question of whether these strategies have been successful in shaping the thoughts and behaviors of people needs further exploration.

Measuring the tangible outcomes of hard soft power initiatives is difficult, especially when it comes to social media. Still, our study as well as other research suggests that decentralized social media platforms may be less effective for foreign influence operations than more traditional media platforms.

What’s next

Our research team plans to examine the hard soft power phenomenon within the context of other countries. Moreover, we plan to carry out a deep dive into patterns of hard soft power use and its influences on people in targeted countries through focus groups and experimental studies.

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