The outbreak of the war between Israel and Iran on June 13 took all players by surprise - both regional and major powers with interests and a presence in the Middle East. Russia today, despite regime change in Syria, remains a key player. It has a strategic partnership with Iran and close trade and investment relations with the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are…
The question of how Europe is faring is fatefully linked to the centre of the continent, Germany. The demonstrative shift in focus of its new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, towards NATO and Berlin’s transatlantic ally, the United States, should not obscure the fact that Europe's largest economy is currently struggling with a multitude of problems at home. However, anyone concerned with Germany's immediate future must analyse precisely these parameters. “Germany is…
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a threat to economic relations with three partners at once - the US, the EU and Great Britain. Despite their different measures of influence on Israel, they are united by their focus on solving Western, rather than Middle Eastern problems, while demonstrating the critical level of Israeli dependence on Europe and the US, which hinders West Jerusalem’s search for foreign trade alternatives. The…
3. Securing a Stable and Strategically Aligned Neighbourhood India’s immediate neighbourhood is undergoing a significant shift. The small nations are on their path of gradual democratisation, accompanied by a rise in nationalism.This has heightened their sensitivities around sovereignty, which is often expressed in reaction to the region’s dominant power i.e. India. Further, China’s expanding footprint in the region poses significant strategic challenge. Beijing has become primary arms exporter to Pakistan…
Despite the fact that one may not fully understand all the processes inside the proverbial "black box", real AI is still under the complete control of human users. Returning to the parallel with electricity, AGI can be compared to a super-complex socket: it has enormous potential, but it only works depending on who plugs into it and why. Of course, there are other views — they emphasise that as the scale…
However, since ancient times, the processes have accelerated, and now the question is important for us: at what stage of the process are we? Have we already passed the peak of the “crumbling” of the old world order or not? Has the collection and construction of the new one begun? Unlike in past times, humanity is much more ready for trials. The power of people has increased many times over, new technologies…
Against this backdrop, Russia has begun – albeit belatedly – to show growing interest in non-Western interpretations of the war and its outcome. For a long time, Russia’s international engagement with World War II memory was Western- and Eurocentric, as evidenced, for example, by the lists of heads of state attending anniversary Victory Parades. While leaders from China, Vietnam, and Mongolia participated in most of these events, the inclusion of…
The roundtable will initiate a broader discussion planned by the organisers on the origins and methods of ensuring security in the modern world – first, through the individual human experience. The second part, on how individual states can ensure internal stability as the main prerequisite for their own security, will be discussed the next day during the Valdai Club session at the SPIEF site. Programme of the Roundtable Discussion…
The recent clash between India and Pakistan was immediately dubbed the “drone war” by the press: for the first time, both sides were actively using UAVs in combat. Leyla Turayanova writes about the reasons for the tensions and explains how Russia unwittingly benefited from the latest Indo-Pakistani escalation. After the failure of attempts to normalise Indo-Pakistani relations at the beginning of Narendra Modi’s first term as prime minister, the situation during…
Russia’s strategy has always been aimed at ensuring its own freedom of choice, but not at including other nations in the orbit of its own value concepts. An exception in this regard was the Soviet period of Russian history, but its end brought us back to the fundamental principles of foreign policy culture, which has absolutely no place for messianism, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev. The most important…
At the same time, the US paused the introduction of new sanctions against Russia. In the EU, the approach of the American administration caused understandable indignation, aggravated by Trump’s trade war “with the whole world” and public criticism of democracy in Europe. Demonstrating the independence of its course has apparently become a matter of principle for Brussels. In addition, the usual dissenters – Hungary and Slovakia – were againg expressing…
On June 5, the Valdai Club in Moscow hosted a discussion on the energy policy of the Donald Trump administration. Moderated by Anton Bespalov, the session explored the potential domestic and international implications of the new US president’s energy agenda, which seeks to revise the “green deal.” Konstantin Simonov, CEO of the National Energy Security Fund and head of the political science department at the Financial University under the Government of…
Trump is not lying in his decree, talking about the “historical role of the coal industry in the United States.” Indeed, coal once accounted for more than half of the country’s electricity production. However, the newly elected billionaire president is being disingenuous when he points to its current status, since in 2023 coal’s share has fallen to 16% compared to 45% in 2010. The current state of many coal plants…
On June 4, the Valdai Club in Moscow hosted a discussion on Russia-Pakistan cooperation and the situation in South Asia. Moderator Anton Bespalov called Pakistan one of the most important countries in Eurasia, emphasizing that Russian-Pakistani relations have a long history and have been developing steadily in recent decades, although they still have untapped potential. At the same time, Russia is very concerned about the creeping confrontation between Pakistan and…
Such positive changes do not, however, cancel the existing threats to stability in the continental space surrounding Russia. First, relations between even the largest regional powers are not free from conflicts and contradictions. The recent tragic events on the border between India and Pakistan have shown how vulnerable Eurasian stability is in terms of the problems existing between states that are, in principle, good partners of Russia. These include those…
Immigration and French Domestic Politics The Franco-Algerian relationship is also heavily burdened by the politicisation of immigration within France. Rising far-right influence has led to increasingly harsh rhetoric and restrictive policies targeting Algerians. In September 2021, the French government slashed the number of visas granted to Algerian nationals by half, citing Algeria’s reluctance to issue consular passes for its deported citizens. This policy was widely interpreted in Algeria as discriminatory…
As the first pontiff born in the United States, yet formed within Latin America’s pastoral and theological traditions, Leo XIV intends to pursue a path that combines global pragmatism with church orthodoxy, Ekaterina Shebalina writes. The pontificate of Pope Francis – vibrant, unpredictable, and marked by contradiction – was characterised by numerous reforms that raised more questions than answers. In 2013, the cardinals were called upon to respond to a…
International competition in the geo-technological sphere is growing, and the nuclear energy is being reborn in a new way and with new tasks: in the coming years, we can expect large projects to integrate nuclear energy and data centres. If such projects are successful, this will not only accelerate the development of artificial intelligence technology, but also affect the landscape of global energy, Maria Bazlutskaya writes. Nuclear energy is making…
Why are the French-speaking countries of Africa uniting faster? The formation of modern African countries was influenced by the France-Afrique system, which France created in the second half of the 20th century and used for more than 40 years. In the 1950s, for President Charles de Gaulle, policy on the African continent was part of the country’s foreign policy development within the framework of the concept of the greatness of…
On May 27, the Valdai Discussion Club, in partnership with the Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies (ISRS) under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, will hold a Russian-Uzbek conference. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Russia and Uzbekistan: Priority Areas of Cooperation”. The conference will be held at the Valdai Club headquarters in Moscow. The Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President of the Republic…
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an important document, which everyone celebrates but mostly ignores, has both Article 16, which clearly defines the defence of the natural family, and Article 18, which determines the right to freedom of religion and its public manifestation, Misa Djurkovic writes. In late April, Iran hosted its first conference dedicated to the Eastern Approach to Human Rights. My colleague Stevan Gajić and I were the…
On May 16, 2025, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion titled “Security in the Asia-Pacific: Between Deterrence and Cooperation”. Moderator Timofei Bordachev, noted that although Eastern Europe currently remains the centre of geopolitical tension, the Asia-Pacific, where the interests of the most important global players converge, also periodically produces alarming news and trends, including those related to the strategic competition between the US and China, as well as the…
There can be no true multipolar transition – and no successful de-dollarisation – without the Ummah: a two-billion-strong social and political force poised to play a central role in the ongoing great power competition, Emmanuel Pietrobon writes. The BRICS+ alliance has come to include more and more Muslims. It is no coincidence, but a predictable inevitability: there can be no Multipolar Transition without the Ummah. Energy-rich, strategic autonomy-hungry, and fiercely…
It is obvious that Russian companies organizing the transportation of Russian oil with the involvement of both domestic and foreign ship owners will have to invest in additional measures to ensure fleet insurance, its environmental and physical safety, aimed at countering the above-described steps of unfriendly countries, including possible new sabotage operations against ships, Evgeny Tipailov and Ivan Angulo write. In the first months of 2025, the world media was…
Having signed a "big" treaty with Poland in Nancy, France is continuing to establish special ties with other individual EU member states while at the same time expecting to rely on Brussels in a long-term confrontation with Russia, writes Alexey Chikhachev, Associate Professor of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University and leading expert at the Centre for Strategic Studies at…
The Taliban hopes to send a signal to Pakistan by increasing its participation in the Chabahar port transit project that it which is not a militia group affiliated with this country, rules an independent country and has various options in foreign policy as well as trade and transit. The Chabahar Transit Project was created on May 24, 2016 as a combined, multimodal network of ships, rails, and road freight routes…
One of the most resonant events at the beginning of Donald Trump's second term in office was the large-scale increase in tariffs on imports to the United States. The new tariff policy affected almost all trading partners, and separate duties were introduced for a group of more than seventy countries. This “trade war against the whole world” became another shock of the first hundred days of the new administration. The…
The fact is that the changing balance of power on a global scale and the inability of previous leaders to maintain their positions causes a fundamental restructuring of the international order. It has become a common opinion in recent years. It is difficult to argue with its validity: first of all, because the power base has really changed – there is no longer a group of countries in the world…
Russia is to hold a parade on Friday to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The main point of parades is not the parade itself, but to move on to the future world we want to build after the parade. This is what both Russia and China are doing, with their leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, meeting in Moscow during the celebrations. Both…
Today, the central commemorative event of Victory Day celebrations in Russia is the military parade. The main parade traditionally takes place on Red Square in Moscow, with additional military parades being held simultaneously in numerous other cities across the Russian Federation. Historically, the first Victory Parade took place on Red Square one and a half months after the end of the war in Europe – on June 24, 1945. It…
As we approach a major anniversary, 80 years since the defeat of fascism, a strange silence hangs over my country, Macedonia, and the broader region we now call the “territory of former Yugoslavia.” National authorities have been under sustained external (Western) pressure for years: May 9 must no longer be associated with the victory over fascism. Year after year, in both public memory and the education system, May 9 has…
It appears that the Victory of May 8th and 9th in France is more and more viewed by the present generations as a US victory, as if memory and history had been defeated by another, more powerful, level of “consciousness”: fame, Olivier Roqueplo writes. May 9th is Victory Day in Russia and it should unite most Europeans. But unfortunately, even in victorious France, history, real memory and the public imagination…
On May 6, 2025, the Valdai Club presented a Valdai Paper titled “Immortal Letters of Victory” on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet people’s victory in the Second World War. It included previously unpublished handwritten materials from the war – fragments of the front-line diary of Guard Sergeant Petr Nosov, letters from partisan Tamara Avalyan, orphanage worker Nina Mayer, and senior lieutenant Vasily Lazarevsky. Oleg Barabanov, the moderator…
Turned yellow over time, soldier’s letters – pieces of paper folded into triangular shapes sent from the frontlines with field post office postmarks – and diaries are unique witnesses of the unparalleled feat. They still hold the warmth of our compatriots’ hands, their faith in and hopes for peaceful life, and the truth of 1,418 sleepless nights. Simple, and occasionally sad, these documents, imbued with the spirit of heroism, have…
The emergence and evolution of civilizational consciousness and identity in Africa unfold within a context marked by profound identity crises and shifting mentalities, shaped by contemporary sociocultural and political transformations, Elena Kharitonova writes. African history, marked by profound sociocultural, political, and psychological upheavals, brings to the fore the complex issue of identity. These transformations – whether affecting individuals, communities, ethnic groups, or entire civilizations – sharply raise questions of self-determination…
The EU is no longer sustained by peace and prosperity – it’s running on panic. And that panic is destroying the very foundations it once promised to uphold, Kancho Stoychev writes. Every narrative posing as analysis hides a climax. And every analysis, this one included, is subjective. That doesn’t eliminate the necessity for objectivity. The common refrain, “the European Union is in crisis,” conceals a deeper turning point with two…
However, in practice, such opposition has not yet been observed. Congress has not shown much activity regarding Russia, even at the level of bills. Since the beginning of 2025, that is, in less than five months, five bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress implying sanctions against Russia. For comparison, there are 10 bills against China and seven bills against Iran. We are talking only about bills that…
BRICS+ stands at a critical crossroads, navigating the delicate balance between reforming existing global governance structures and ambitiously seeking to redefine them. At the heart of this evolution lies the dynamic between Russia and India – a relationship marked by both deep strategic cooperation and underlying geopolitical strains, Pravesh Kumar Gupta writes. In an era of heightened geopolitical flux, the post-COVID-19 global order appears increasingly fractured. The once-harmonious narrative of…
If McKinley symbolizes “greatness” for Trump, Mexico embodies many of the country’s problems. Back in 2015, when announcing his first presidential campaign, Trump declared: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” While the idea of renaming the Gulf was first floated at Trump’s press conference on January 7, 2025, it’s likely that the president had long been bothered by the reference…
On April 21, on the eve of the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, which is celebrated under the auspices of the UN, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion titled “The Boundaries of Reason: The Diplomat’s Work in New Realities.” The moderator of the discussion, Anton Bespalov,called the fading of traditional diplomacy in the West and its flourishing in the Global South an important element of the new…