Experts in the News | Miller Center

Can Putin's economy survive Western sanctions?

Many recent reports have emphasized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s post-2014 efforts to build a “Fortress Russia” that could resist Western economic sanctions. With American and European governments now ratcheting up restrictions on the Russian financial system, the question remains whether Russia will be able to circumvent those efforts to punish their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The answer is almost certainly “No.”

Scott Miller

UVA Miller Center talks nuclear escalation

Senior Fellow Todd Sechser is interviewed on NBC29.

Todd Sechser

Hospital Systems in American History w/Guian McKee

Guian McKee serves as associate professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, where he is also co-director of the center’s new Health Care Policy Initiative. He is the author of Hospital City, Health Care Nation: Race, Capital, and the Costs of American Health Care, which will be published in February 2023 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He is also the author of The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (2008, Chicago), and the editor or co-editor of five volumes in the Miller Center’s “Presidential Recordings of Lyndon Johnson” series.

Guian McKee

This is no 'war of choice'

Observers and commentators need to stop referring to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as Putin's "war of choice." This is an unprovoked, premeditated, scripted, war of aggression -- something the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II called the "supreme international crime." The Russian campaign has also now targeted civilians, also a war crime, and nuclear power plants which are also war crimes. The alleged use by Putin of Islamist thugs and assassins from Chechnya to secure the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (the largest in Europe) and the irresponsible shelling of the plant make it clear that Putin is using the implied threat of a nuclear incident to terrorize Ukraine and Europe and reinforce the impact of his earlier threats to use nuclear weapons in the conflict.

Eric Edelman

The China connection and Putin's endgame

Vladimir Putin has got himself into a terrible mess. Aside from setting most of the world against him and reinvigorating the very alliance, NATO, which he claims he is acting to thwart, his actions in Ukraine have placed his own country on the brink of economic collapse. Such a collapse would not only endanger Russia’s position as a middle power between the economic superpowers of the United States and China, but it might even bring about his downfall. Putin’s original plans – of taking Ukraine quickly, installing a puppet regime in Kyiv, and perhaps lopping off the eastern half of Ukraine as parts of a reconstituted Russian empire – have been thrown out the window.

Dale Copeland

Where does the war go next?

If the Russians can subdue Ukraine, where might an expansion-focused Russian leadership turn next? If restoring in part or whole the borders of the 19th century Russian empire is a goal of President Putin, then the Baltic States -- Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia -- may be a target for aggression. The risks there for the United States are very high. First, these states are members of NATO, which means the U.S. is legally committed to their defense. Our willingness to honor that commitment affects the credibility of our defense commitments everywhere else in the world.

Allan C. Stam