... financial crisis and how to overcome it. Equally surprising was Russia's absence from ASEM, which discussed strengthening the links between two major regions of Europe and Asia, especially given Russia’s strategic position as a bridge between Europe and Asia, as Russian politicians and experts have pointed out.
The key ASEM partners do not see this platform as the most promising and give priority to others, such as G20.
Because Russia initially showed little interest in this platform, its accession to this forum ...
... substantial alignment of geopolitical and ideological views with the West is nowhere in our sight, transferring stakes to other regions and diversifying Russia’s international portfolio seems rather pragmatic.
REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Igor Ivanov:
Russia and Europe: New Rules
of the Game
East Asia is the first choice for such a hedging policy, when you consider Russia's grand state-building strategy. It involves bringing about qualitatively new economic development for the country's Siberia and the Far East ...
... European Union to the Russian Federation hosted a Roundtable “
EU and Russia: Our Differences, Interconnections and the Way Forward
,” attended by many leading experts from Russia and the EU countries. The reasons for the profound crisis in Russian-European relations were analyzed. Participants tried to find an explanation as to why the previously created mechanisms for interaction and the accumulated experience of collaboration had failed to prevent the slide into mutual distrust, misunderstanding ...
... the west has been characterised by competing narratives concerning the origins and development of events. These differing interpretations make coming to any kind of consensus on the future of the European security order extremely difficult.
Prominent European and Russian experts were brought together by the European Leadership Network and the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) to examine these narratives, their origins in international law, and to determine how they may be transcended.
In its analysis ...
... current systemic crisis in relations between Russia and the West makes difficult forming longterm priorities with regard to Europe. The events of recent months suggest that Moscow is ready to put a great deal of effort into normalizing relations with Europe.
Russia will need to exert substantial political and economic resources if it is to continue its effort to “Pivot to the East” and create an independent pole of growth in Eurasia through the development of the Eurasian Economic Union. In this context,...
... approach was applied to the European media, which were considered to be as tightly controlled by respective European governments as the Russian mainstream media were controlled by the Kremlin. This inclination to ignore fundamental differences in how Russian and European leaders see the world was a source of many misunderstandings and complications that could otherwise have been avoided.
“Cherry picking should make the trick”
Daniel Maclise, Peter the Great at Deptford Dockyard
Since Peter the Great,...
... traditions and longstanding experience of cooperation with Russia, might become an essential partner. And the report offers several constructive points that could make up the basis for progress along these lines.
REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Igor Ivanov:
Russia and Europe: New Rules of the Game
Primarily, this relates to the appeal to integrate Russia into the new system of the
Concert of Europe
, a step seen by the authors as something extremely urgent to be implemented through a series of steps.
First, the French ...
... and accelerate social and economic reforms.
Poroshenko, however, was supported by a dissonant, but loud chorus of Central European leaders. As expected, the uncompromising Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė was particularly vocal in condemning Russia. She even said there was a high probability of a military conflict in Europe between Moscow and the West, drawing rumblings from the Europeans in the audience who are not used to such apocalyptic assessments of the situation on their continent.
www.securityconference.de
Dmitry Medvedev and Manuel Valls
Newly elected President ...
... was held in Munich on February 12 to 14.
The conference was attended by more than twenty heads of state and government, dozens of ministers of foreign affairs and of defense, as well as by hundreds of leading politicians, diplomats and experts.
The Russian International Affairs Council was represented by Sergei Lavrov, its Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Russian Foreign Minister, and RIAC President Igor Ivanov.
RIAC members Mikhail Bogdanov, Alexandr Dynkin, Herman Gref, Alexey Gromyko, Sergei ...
... this with an understanding but not with a creation of mechanisms, because instruments have already existed in the past, but did not prevent Russia and Europe from entering into deep crisis. The Russian participants proposed in the future to focus the European-Russian debates not on values, but on common pragmatic interests and understanding of each counterpart’s interests. These common interests could concentrate on economic and/or security issues. It’s important to save economic ties that are ...
