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Tomorrow’s cultural diplomacy may be much less the work of states and specialised institutions and far more the domain of algorithms, platforms, and millions of individual users who never imagined themselves as practitioners of diplomacy. Cultural influence, then, is not disappearing—it is simply channelling itself through increasingly informal routes, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Anton Bespalov. Cultural exchange has long accompanied political and economic interactions between states, yet it was…

On 8 July, the Moscow venue of the Valdai Club hosted a discussion entitled “Russia’s Role in International Educational Mobility”. Moderator Oleg Barabanov noted that the issue of attracting foreign undergraduate, Master’s-level, and doctoral students to Russian universities is becoming increasingly significant. The President of Russia has set an ambitious target—to increase the number of international students studying in Russia to 500,000 over the medium term. Achieving this goal will…

While building effective coordination between Russia and China will require sustained effort to manage differences, the rewards are immense: a peaceful South Caucasus will contribute to Eurasian security and prosperity, and advance a more just, multipolar global order, Peng Bo writes. The 8th Summit of the European Political Community, held on 4 May 2026 in Yerevan, Armenia, has thrust the South Caucasus back to the centre of global geopolitical competition.…

The international system has undergone profound structural transformations marked by great power competition, rising protectionism, and growing uncertainty concerning traditional globalisation. Recurrent disruptions in global supply chains have further pushed states to rethink trade routes, infrastructure networks, and economic dependencies. Within this context, strategic corridors have emerged as key geoeconomic instruments for reshaping global economic geography. They are no longer limited to infrastructure or trade facilitation, but increasingly serve to…

On July 6, the Valdai Club hosted a discussion titled “War, Sanctions, Supply and Demand: Oil Markets After the Gulf Crisis.” Moderator Ivan Timofeev posed a series of questions to the panellists regarding the fragility of the current truce and its impact on oil markets: to what extent has the cessation of hostilities influenced prices, what are the prospects for a sustained return to pre-crisis price levels, how are market…

While OPEC+ and the US may be the two whales of global oil markets, ASEAN is not a third whale. Its countries are a school of smaller fish swimming between them. They do not get to decide how the whales move. What they can decide is how we swim: not locking onto one whale’s wake, but staying agile enough to shift when the current changes, Tu Anh Tuan writes. On…

In spite of pessimistic forecasts of certain doom for Iran if Tehran ever found itself in a direct confrontation with Washington, the Islamic Republic withstood the overwhelming US-Israeli blow launched against it after decades of mounting tensions. With Iran emerging from the conflict as the first state in fifty years to survive a war with America, the outcome of the Middle East clash may now send ripples throughout an international…

France’s growing activity on NATO’s eastern flank represents a long-term shift in its foreign policy and reflects a particular emphasis on relations with Poland, even though the project being advanced by Paris faces a number of fundamental limitations, argues Aleksei Chikhachev, Associate Professor at the Department of European Studies, School of International Relations of Saint Petersburg State University, Leading Expert at the Center for Strategic Studies, Institute of Foreign Economic…