Angela Stent
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged much of the common Western understanding of Russia. How can the world better understand Russia? What are the steps forward for Western policy? The Eurasia Center’s new “Russia Tomorrow” series seeks to reevaluate conceptions of Russia today and better prepare for its future tomorrow.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has brought it a new set of partners. While this group is sometimes referred to as an axis, in reality it is a set of intensifying bilateral ties with countries—China, Iran and North Korea—that are essential for Russia’s continued prosecution of the war. The presence of these countries’ leaders at the military parade in Beijing to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia—and their fulsome commitment to a new world order that the United States no longer dominates—suggests that these countries increasingly constitute an anti-US bloc, united not by shared values but by shared grievances.
These three authoritarian states are essential allies not only in the war on Ukraine, but also in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan for a “post-West” global order. In Putin’s vision, this would be a multipolar world in which the United States has lost its “hegemonic” role and is only one of several great powers setting the global agenda. As Putin noted at the 2024 Valdai International Discussion Club, “What is at stake is the West’s monopoly, which emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was held temporarily at the end of the twentieth century. But let me reiterate, as those gathered here understand: any monopoly, as history teaches us, eventually comes to an end.”
What is the nature of Russia’s relationship with these three revisionist powers? To what extent do they coordinate their policies? How durable are these new sets of relationships and how might they evolve once the war is over? This report will address these questions and suggest how the West might deal with “the CRINK”—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—collectively and individually going forward.
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