On March 15, 2021, the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) held an off-limits online workshop on the situation in the Middle East and Syria. The event was attended by leading Russian and European experts.
Opening remarks were made by Andrey Kortunov, RIAC Director General, and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
On March 15, 2021, the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) held an off-limits online workshop on the situation in the Middle East and Syria. The event was attended by leading Russian and European experts.
Opening remarks were made by Andrey Kortunov, RIAC Director General, and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The event was divided into two sessions. The first session focused on the perspectives of Russia and the EU on a new U.S. Middle East policy, as experts assessed the prospects for interaction between Russia and the EU with Biden’s administration and discussed the likely U.S. priorities in the Middle East as well as scenarios analyzing potential course of the key conflicts and ways to bring stability the region.
Alexander Aksenyonok, RIAC Vice-President, and Ellie Geranmayeh, Senior Policy Fellow and Deputy Head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, delivered their presentations. The session was moderated by Hugh Lovatt, Policy Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The second session saw a discussion on how Russia, the EU and Syria could move forward and addressed the role of Russia and the EU in Syria as well as the prospects for international cooperation to resolve the crisis. The participants discussed the degree of involvement of global and regional powers in the Syrian events, the dynamics of the conflict and the need for interaction between the parties.
The speakers of the session included Irina Zvyagelskaya, RIAC Member, Head of the Center for the Middle East Studies at RAS IMEMO, Professor of the Department of Oriental Studies at MGIMO MFA, and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The second session was moderated by Ruslan Mamedov, RIAC Program Manager.
