On July 6, 2009, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev signed an agreement creating a US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission (BPC). The early Obama years witnessed substantial momentum and political will, bolstered by the US-Russian “reset,” for international partnership with Russia along a broad array of issue areas. Activities linking governmental and nongovernmental players on both sides flourished under the BPC umbrella, including 20 substantive government-to-government working groups and three civil society summits (two of which were held in tandem with annual presidential summits in Moscow and Washington).¹

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Russian presidency has produced remarkable upheaval in the...

By the reckoning of its 1989 census, the Russian Federation’s population stood at about 147.4 million that year. Over two decades later, Russia’s 2010 census counted just 142.9 million persons. Russia has thus been in the grip of a long-term depopulation. The depopulation has been a post-Communist phenomenon. Between the start of 1993 and the beginning of 2009, according to the Russian Federal Statistical Service (Goskomstat), Russia’s numbers fell from 148.6 million to 142.7 million—that is, by nearly 6 million, or about 4 percent.

After 16 years of unremitting population decline, Russia reported a marginal (10,000-person) population gain over...