On June 3, 2020, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) held a closed virtual seminar on the situation in Syria. The event was attended by leading Russian and European experts.
Andrey Kortunov, RIAC Director General, and Julien Barnes-Dacey,
Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council
on Foreign Relations, opened the meeting. Ellie Geranmayeh, Deputy Head of the MENA
Programme at ECFR, moderated the meeting.
On June 3, 2020, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) held a closed virtual seminar on the situation in Syria. The event was attended by leading Russian and European experts.
Andrey Kortunov, RIAC Director General, and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, opened the meeting. Ellie Geranmayeh, Deputy Head of the MENA Programme at ECFR, moderated the meeting. Julien Barnes-Dacey and Andrey Chuprygin, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE, RIAC expert, made reports at the beginning of the seminar, providing the assessment of Russian and European positions on the Syrian crisis. RIAC and ECFR experts discussed the Syrian economic development trajectory, the sanctions policy and humanitarian aspects, the regional dynamics of the conflict, and the U.S. position. The parties also focused on possible joint actions of Moscow and Brussels on the humanitarian front and the political track.
The meeting was also attended by Ivan Timofeev, RIAC Director of Programs; Nikolay Surkov, Senior Senior Fellow at the Center for the Middle Eastern Studies at RAS IMEMO, RIAC Expert; Maxim Suchkov, RIAC Expert, Senior Fellow, Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems at MGIMO MFA; Aleksey Khlebnikov, RIAC Expert; Ruslan Mamedov, RIAC Program Manager; Erwin van Veen, Senior Research Fellow in the Conflict Research Unit at Clingendael (Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael); Asli Aydıntaşbaş, Senior Policy Fellow with the Wider Europe Programme, ECFR; and Hugh Lovatt, Policy Fellow with the MENA Programme, ECFR.
