Russia–United States relations

• 1. Introduction

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  Russia and the United States have called each other partners, rivals, and foreign adversaries within the span of a single lifetime. Their formal ties trace back to 1803. Their current diplomatic relationship, though, only began in 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved.

  In 1994, Boris Yeltsin sat across from Bill Clinton in Novo-Ogaryovo and argued that Russia should join NATO first, ahead of Central and Eastern Europe. In 2009, U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov pressed a symbolic 'reset' button together. The State Department had mistranslated the Russian word, so the button actually read 'overload.' Years later, in 2011, Vice President Joe Biden told Vladimir Putin to his face, 'I don't think you have a soul.' Putin replied only, 'We understand each other.'

  How did two nuclear powers move from a hopeful embrace after the Cold War to annexed territory, expelled diplomats, and mutual sanctions? And why, by the second Trump administration, was Washington voting alongside Moscow against a UN resolution condemning Russia's own invasion of Ukraine?

• 2. Nuclear Arms and Uneasy Trust

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  The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 opened a long era of arms control between Washington and Moscow. Two Strategic Arms Limitation treaties followed, then the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. In July 1991, the two countries signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

  At the Malta Summit in December 1989, Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush had already agreed to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by 30 percent. The Soviet Union also promised to reduce its intercontinental ballistic missile force by half. In January 1993, Bush and Yeltsin agreed to START II, adding cuts on top of the original treaty. Both countries ratified it, but it was never implemented. It was formally abandoned in 2002, after the U.S. withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

  Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar cosponsored the Nunn-Lugar Act, creating the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Its stated purpose was to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet states.

  In April 2010, Obama and Medvedev signed the New START treaty. It cut each side's long-range nuclear weapons to about 1,500, down from the 1,700 to 2,200 ceiling set by the 2002 Moscow Treaty. New START replaced the original 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which had expired the previous December.

  In July 2014, the U.S. formally accused Russia of violating the 1987 INF Treaty by testing a prohibited medium-range ground-launched cruise missile, presumably a modification of the Iskander system known as R-500. Concern deepened further that year, when Russia test-fired the RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, a weapon designed to evade existing missile defenses. By June 2015, the State Department said Russia still had not corrected the violation, and had made no real progress toward acknowledging the problem.

  In March 2007, the U.S. announced plans for a missile defense site in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Officials said the system targeted possible attacks from Iran or North Korea, not Russia. Russia disagreed, testing a long-range missile called the RS-24 that it said could defeat any defense system. In June 2007, Putin warned that if the U.S. built the shield, Russia would consider aiming its own missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic. By August 2008, the U.S. and Poland agreed to place ten two-stage missile interceptors, built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, on Polish soil. Washington also pledged to defend Poland faster than NATO's standard procedures required, and the Czech Republic agreed to host a radar-tracking station despite polls showing only 18 percent public support.

  The missile debate over Poland and the Czech Republic was only one front in a wider argument over how far NATO itself should expand.

• 3. NATO's Eastward Shadow

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  On the 21st of December 1991, Boris Yeltsin sent NATO a letter asking it to consider Russian membership someday. He wrote that such a step would 'contribute to an atmosphere of mutual understanding and trust' and called it 'a long-term political goal.'

  Four years later, in 1995, a NATO study on enlarging the alliance began to alarm Moscow. In 1999, the alliance admitted the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, its first expansion into the old Eastern Bloc. Yeltsin also opposed NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo and criticized the alliance's eastward expansion as a threat to Russian security.

  In March 1997, meeting Bill Clinton in Finland, Yeltsin called NATO's eastward move 'a mistake.' He agreed to sign an agreement with the alliance anyway, calling it 'a forced step' with no other solution available. His conditions included barring the former Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, from ever joining.

  Yeltsin's national security aide Yuri Baturin argued around the same period that 'the time of NATO has passed' and floated merging its military role into the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe.

  A decade later, in early 2008, President George W. Bush vowed full support for admitting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Russia's deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, warned that Ukraine's entry into NATO would cause a 'deep crisis' in Russia-Ukraine relations.

  By 2014, the same government in Kyiv that Karasin had warned about would become the center of Russia's most drastic move yet.

• 4. The Ukraine Fault Line

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  In February 2014, the government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych collapsed. Weeks later, Russia annexed Crimea, citing a referendum held on the 16th of March 2014.

  The U.S. had already proposed a UN resolution declaring the referendum illegal. Russia vetoed it, China abstained, and the other 13 Security Council members voted in favor. Secretary of State John Kerry called the annexation 'trumped up' and 'really 19th century behavior in the 21st century.' On the 24th of March 2014, the U.S. and its G8 allies suspended Russia's membership in the forum; Russia dismissed the move as inconsequential.

  Obama ruled out Western military intervention and admitted the annexation would be hard to reverse, but he dismissed Russia as merely a 'regional power.' Putin later called that comment an attempt to 'prove one's exceptionalism by contrast.'

  Between March 2014 and 2016, the U.S. and its allies imposed six rounds of sanctions, first freezing the assets of individuals close to Putin. Russia responded by banning imports of certain foods and barring entry to officials from sanctioning countries. At the end of 2014, the U.S. passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act. It sent $350 million in arms and military equipment to Ukraine while cutting Russian state firms off from Western financing. As vice president, Joe Biden pushed Ukraine to cut its reliance on Russian natural gas and remove pro-Russia middlemen like Dmitry Firtash from its energy industry.

  Two years later, in 2016, former officials from the ousted Yanukovych government testified in a Moscow court that they believed a Washington-backed coup was behind the collapse. Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Stratfor chairman George Friedman had called it the 'most blatant coup in history,' a characterization Friedman said was taken out of context.

  Relations worsened further after Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, during Joe Biden's presidency. The U.S. and its allies expanded the sanctions first imposed in 2014, adding several state-owned banks and oligarchs to the list. During the second Trump administration, the U.S. reversed course, voting in February 2025 against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia's invasion. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also ordered a suspension of offensive American cyber operations against Russia. Despite the shift, relations stayed poor, strained by the war in Ukraine and, by 2026, by the Iran war as well.

  Within a few years, Washington's attention would turn to a very different kind of flashpoint, one unfolding entirely inside Russia's own borders.

• 5. Navalny and New Sanctions

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  On the 17th of January 2021, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested upon his return to the country. Jake Sullivan, Biden's incoming national security advisor, demanded his immediate release and said the Kremlin's attacks on Navalny were 'an affront to the Russian people who want their voices heard.'

  On the day of Biden's inauguration, Russia urged the incoming administration to take a 'more constructive' approach to renewing the New START treaty. On the 26th of January, Biden and Putin agreed to extend New START by five years; it would otherwise have expired that February.

  On the 17th of March 2021, Russia recalled its ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, a move its foreign ministry called without precedent for a Russian envoy. The recall followed Biden calling Putin 'a killer' who would 'pay the price' for interference in the 2020 election. A declassified intelligence report had confirmed that interference the day before.

  On the 15th of April, the U.S. expelled 10 Russian diplomats and sanctioned six Russian technology companies along with 32 other individuals and entities. The new sanctions also targeted Russia's ruble-denominated sovereign debt, though observers judged the punishment 'more bark than bite' and largely symbolic.

  The ambassador recall and the new sanctions were pointed gestures, but Washington's deeper worries about Moscow's covert reach were about to resurface elsewhere.

• 6. Shadows of Interference

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  Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. government, leaked hundreds of thousands of pages of secret documents in 2013. He fled first to Hong Kong, then to Russia, where he received political asylum in July 2013. U.S. prosecutors wanted him on charges of theft of government property and espionage. The asylum grant angered Washington enough that it canceled a planned Obama-Putin meeting set for early September 2013 in Moscow. Snowden was still in Russia as of October 2023.

  In December 2016, President Obama ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to review Russian interference in that year's presidential campaign. Press reports, citing senior officials, said the CIA had concluded with 'high confidence' that Russia acted covertly to hurt Hillary Clinton's chances and help Donald Trump. President-elect Trump called the assessment 'ridiculous.' On the 6th of January 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence formally assessed that Putin himself had ordered the influence campaign, with the stated goal of harming Clinton and 'undermining public faith in the US democratic process.' Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, later admitted he had been in contact with Russian operatives and had shared campaign information with them. That same December, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation. Shortly before Trump's inauguration, the Steele dossier, compiled by a private intelligence firm, was leaked to the public; it alleged Russia held compromising material on Trump and had offered not to release it if his campaign cooperated. Among the contacts scrutinized afterward, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's conversations with Russia's ambassador drew the most attention.

  After Trump's July 2018 summit with Putin in Helsinki, Republican senator John McCain condemned the joint press conference, calling it 'one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.' Politico reported that Trump had 'sided with the Russians over the U.S. intelligence community's assessment,' and wrote that the news conference deepened fears among some that he was in Putin's pocket. Former CIA director John Brennan accused Trump of treason, tweeting, 'He is wholly in the pocket of Putin.' Former acting CIA director Michael Morell called Trump 'an unwitting agent of the Russian federation.' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi summarized the pattern more simply: 'All roads lead to Putin.'

  A New York Times report in June 2020 cited unnamed officials describing a Russian bounty program. American intelligence assessed with medium confidence that a Russian military intelligence unit, designated 29155, had paid Taliban-linked militants to kill foreign troops, including Americans, in Afghanistan in 2019. The Pentagon said the program could not be corroborated, and both the Taliban and Russia denied it existed. President Trump and his aides denied he had ever been briefed on the program. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany both said no such briefing took place. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Generals Kenneth McKenzie and Scott Miller had dug into the reports and did not find them credible. McKenzie added that he found no 'causative link' to any actual American deaths, though he noted a lack of proof is 'often true in battlefield intelligence.' On the 1st of July 2020, the House Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly to restrict Trump's ability to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

  On the 25th of September 2020, U.S. B-52 bombers staged a mock attack run over Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave wedged between NATO countries, testing how the bombers might destroy Russian air defense systems stationed there. Even so, within weeks the two governments would try, once again, to find room to talk.

• 7. Handshakes and Distrust

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  In 2001, days after the September 11 attacks, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced strong support for the United States. He found common ground with George W. Bush by backing the American and NATO invasion of Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

  At the 2009 G20 summit in London, Medvedev and Obama struck a warm tone and issued a joint statement promising a 'fresh start.' The statement also urged Iran to abandon its nuclear program and allow in foreign inspectors. That July, visiting Moscow, Obama told a gathering at the New Economic School that 'America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia.'

  Trump moved fast: a week after his January 2017 inauguration, he held a 52-minute call with Putin, and both governments called it a step toward improving relations. In May 2017, Trump met Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office and disclosed highly classified information during their conversation. That July, at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Trump met Putin in person and called the meeting 'an honour.' By November, at the Asia-Pacific summit in Danang, the two had no formal meeting but spoke informally several times.

  By June 2017, Putin himself said relations had sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War ended. That same distrust already had a live battlefield expression: Russian and American-backed forces were operating on opposite sides of Syria's civil war.

• 8. Proxy War in Syria

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  Syria's civil war began in the spring of 2011, and the U.S. quickly sanctioned the government and urged President Bashar al-Assad to resign. Russia, a long-standing ally of Damascus, instead increased its support for Assad against rebels backed by the U.S. and its regional allies.

  On the 30th of September 2015, Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria on the government's side. That October, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia had invited the U.S. to join a Baghdad-based coordination center with Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Washington's response, he said, was 'unconstructive,' and a proposed exchange of military delegations was declined as well.

  President Obama called Russia's air campaign a 'recipe for disaster,' while Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said its real goal was propping up Assad. On the 20th of October 2015, three weeks into the campaign, Putin met Assad in Moscow to discuss military strategy and Syria's political future. The meeting drew sharp condemnation from the White House. Peace talks held in Vienna that October and November, with Iran at the table for the first time, exposed the same deep split over Assad's future. On the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey, Obama and Putin reportedly reached some consensus on Syria.

  That consensus collapsed on the 3rd of October 2016, when the U.S. unilaterally suspended bilateral talks over a renewed assault on Aleppo. The same day, Putin signed a decree suspending a 2000 agreement on managing plutonium stockpiles, citing American actions that posed a 'threat to strategic stability.' Russia's UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said tensions with Washington were 'probably the worst since 1973,' recalling the Arab-Israeli war of that year. Follow-up talks in Lausanne and London produced nothing, and the U.S. and UK then threatened new sanctions unless Russia and the 'Assad regime' halted the campaign in Aleppo.

  In a later interview with the broadcaster RT, Assad said direct conflict between Russian and American forces had been averted only 'by the wisdom of the Russian leadership,' and that without Russia's intervention, the American strike on Syria would have been 'far more extensive.'