... by representatives from more than fifty countries.
The conference speakers included:
Sergey Lavrov
, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, at Special Dialogue session, and
Andrey Kortunov
, RIAC Director General, at plenary session on the future of Syria. Other participants of MED2018 included: Aleksandr Dynkin, RIAC Member, President of IMEMO, RAS Full Member; Alexander Grushko, RIAC Member, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia; Sergey Razov, RIAC Member, Ambassador of the Russian Federation ...
Russia and its partners can arguably win the war, but they cannot win the peace in Syria
Historically, the Middle East has never been a Russia’s strategic priority comparable to Europe, the North-East Pacific or even the Central Asia. Unlike many other major European powers, Russia had no colonial ambitions in the region; it never considered the Middle East ...
... the US, which envisaged Iranian forces pull out from the Syria-Israeli border, is a good evidence.
Damascus understands that and might use this issue as a bargaining chip in its talks with the West and GCC states to eventually attract their money into Syria.
Yuri Barmin:
Russia and Israel: The Middle Eastern Vector of Relations
Third, in the course of its involvement in Syria Russia planned to reorganize the Syrian army in order to enhance its command and control functions and to make it more professional and autonomous. Since 2015 Moscow ...
... in the course of the meeting: various aspects of Syrian Settlement, results of the quadripartite Russia-Turkey-France-Germany summit meeting in Istanbul, options for Syrian political transit, possible areas of cooperation between Russia and France in Syria and in the Middle East.
The meeting also focused on the military-political consequences of the likely withdrawal of the United States from the INF Treaty, ways to overcome the current arms control crisis and to restore a single and indivisible European security ...
On October 26, a delegation of the Syrian High Negotiations Committee headed by Nasr al-Hariri arrived in Moscow and was received at the Russian Foreign Ministry, where it met with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and held extensive consultations with Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov ...
Working paper 42/2018
The Working paper was prepared by the Russian International Affairs Council as part of the project "Security System in the Middle East". This paper covers the issue of complex relations between Russia and Israel in the Middle East. The author analyzes in detail Russia’s role in the Israel-Syria-Iran triangle.
The degree of Iranian presence in Syria, the impact of the nuclear deal in the context of Israeli-Iranian regional confrontation, the role of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement in Russian-Israeli relations are also discussed in the ...
... the future of nuclear warheads in Europe; these talks were largely related to the very sense of retaining the alliance now that the “communist adversary"was gone. NATO started looking for new “threats,"eventually identifying a number of Middle Eastern states, such as Iran, Syria and Iraq [
13
]. As Western rhetoric about the danger of the Iranian nuclear program and the need to “deter” Iran gained pace, many observers, including those in Turkey, began to believe that nuclear weapons were still of political and military ...
Reconstruction project in Syria is very favorable for Turkey taken its current economic situation
In recent decades, the Middle East has become a playground of the great powers and their supported legal-illegal groups. As most of the Middle-Eastern countries which tend to be polarized due to their social structure, Syria has now been struggling with an internal disorder ...
Interview for RT
Israel has long made the point that it puts its security, the lives of its servicemen above everything else — a maxim that may have contributed to the downing of the Russian reconnaissance plane over Syria.
Now that Moscow mirrors this approach back at Israel, can the two preserve the spirit of accommodation they were once so proud of? To discuss this, Oksana Boyko is joined by Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs ...
... institutions will provide aid or investments in the post-conflict period.
Russian experts believe that, given the fact that China, Iran and Russia are building up cooperative ties, the sides could define their areas of responsibility both on the restoration of Syria, and on the Middle East as a whole.
China has already expressed its intention to take part in the restoration of Syria [
35
]. Vladimir Putin has talked about the importance of this in the past [
36
]. Russian companies are also expanding their presence in the country....
