Russia in Global Affairs

Each new round of history changes the circumstances under which classic diplomacy becomes unnecessary, and national leaders, on the contrary, have to live up to the highest expectations.

February 2022 marked the end of a large-scale historical experiment aimed to test the hypothesis that Russia may be included in the international order created by the leading Western powers without its participation but providing certain room for its development in accordance with the rules established by the leaders of this order. The result is negative.

Although Russia is responsible for its actions, there are those, both in Ukraine and particularly in the West, who have been working hard for years to transform Ukraine into a bridgehead, even a launching pad against Russia, not caring at all what it may ultimately mean not only for Russia but also for Ukraine.

The West is waging a political-military war of total or absolute character against Russia. What Russia faces now is the second edition, the 21st-century edition of the Great Patriotic War, writes Dayan Jayatilleka.

The desire to replay the Cold War is an attempt to reverse the wheel of history.

Perestroika inherited a difficult situation in terms of interethnic and federal relations. I have to admit that when we started perestroika, my colleagues and I did not see the full extent of that problem.

Attempts to define fascism mostly through ideology, so trendy these days, do not work, precisely because in most fascist movements and in all fascist regimes ideology plays primarily a manipulative role.

The online session “International Relations and Memory of WWII Today”, organized by the European University in Saint Petersburg and the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, was held on November 23. The participants in the panel discussion, moderated by Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of “Russia in Global Affairs”, included Alexei Miller, Tony Brenton, Sergei Kislyak, Ulrich Brandenburg, and Philip David Zelikow.

The situation with religious minorities in many respects reflects the logic of the political process of recent decades in Turkey. The social base and the core constituency of the ruling AKP are people of conservative views or even supporters of religious nationalism. For this part of society, nationalism and Islamic identity are interrelated and complementary notions.