🇷🇺🇮🇳 Russia and India on the Eve of a Multipolar World

On July 9, 2024, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion about the results of the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Russia.

💬 Moderator Ivan Timofeev emphasised that this was the first international visit of the Indian leader since he was re-elected. There have been no direct Russian-Indian summits for a long time; during this time, many important issues have accumulated and the need for a kind of synchronisation of watches has become urgent.

💬 Venkatesh Varma, Honorary Research Fellow of the Vivekananda Foundation, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of India to Russia (2018–2021), noted that relations between Russia and India are deeply rooted in the past. They have traditionally been strong, because the interests of the two countries largely coincide from a fundamental point of view. Now these relations are adapting to new international circumstances; new driving forces are appearing. The diplomat called for the development of interaction between the youth of the two countries and the exchange of ideas at the level of the academic community, noting that the new order should not “be based on an ideological system dominated by the West.” He lauded Modi's visit to Moscow as very successful and timely, suggesting that Russia and India will be able to find common grounds for building relations.

💬 Lydia Kulik, head of India studies at the Skolkovo Research Institute for Emerging Markets, indicated that before this week, the most recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Russia had taken place in 2019. Since then, there have been high level meetings, but the tradition of summits alternately held in Russia and India was broken. Since 2019, not only has the world changed, but the role of Russia and India in this world has increased significantly. In the emerging new world order, the role of Russia and India is difficult to overestimate, including in a conceptual sense. This makes direct dialogue between the leaders of the two countries especially significant. According to Kulik, India’s position in recent years is proof of the reliability of Russian-Indian relations. There is hope that as a result of the summit, a certain road map for the development of Russian-Indian cooperation will emerge.

💬 “This is the first meeting of the two leaders in the multipolar era,” said Zorawar Daulet Singh, a visiting fellow at the Forum for Strategic Initiatives. He added that a new world order is emerging. The balance of power in the world is changing, and Russia's determination and the sacrifices it makes at this difficult moment are very important. After the transition to multipolarity, multilateral institutions will play a stabilising role in Eurasia, and the international system will become fairer. Singh emphasised that India is interested in changing the infrastructure in Eurasia and welcomes the formation of a new system. India doesn't need a Cold War vision, and it doesn't accept Russia's isolation. The analyst added that he sees many opportunities for Russian-Indian cooperation to help achieve economic independence from the West.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/russia-and-india-on-the-eve-of-a-multipolar-world/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #India #IndiaRussia #NarendraModi

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⏰ TODAY at 16:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host a discussion, titled “Russia in the World: Results of the Foreign Policy Season 2023-2024.”

❓Given these developments, what can be expected from the upcoming foreign policy period?
❓How will the crisis in Ukraine evolve, and what are the prospects for a resolution?

Participants in this discussion will address these and other questions.

Links to the live broadcast of the discussion will be posted on all online platforms of the Valdai Club: on the website, X (formerly Twitter), VKontakte, Telegram and Dzen.

#Return_of_Diplomacy #diplomacy #Russia

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🎥 LIVE: at 16:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), we are starting a discussion, titled “Russia in the World: Results of the Foreign Policy Season 2023-2024.”

https://vk.com/video-214192832_456239201

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #diplomacy #Russia

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🗣 On July 10, 2024, the Valdai Discussion Club held a discussion, titled “Russia in the World: Results of the Foreign Policy Season 2023-2024.”

📷 Photo gallery

🎥 Video

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #diplomacy #Russia

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🌏 The Results of Foreign Policy Season: A Multipolar Whirlpool

On July 10, 2024, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion, titled “Russia in the World: Results of the Foreign Policy Season 2023-2024”.

💬 Moderator Ivan Timofeev called this season quite eventful. He highlighted the emergence of the concept of a Eurasian security structure in Russian foreign policy philosophy, the expansion of BRICS, Vladimir Putin’s visits to the DPRK and Vietnam, deepening interaction with Iran, joint exercises with China, Russia's presence in the Atlantic Ocean, the development of the Ukrainian conflict, and the failure of the Swiss summit. “We are in the centre, in a whirlpool of events, however, it is under control,” Timofeev concluded.

💬 “The world has changed dramatically since February 2022 and continues to change. What happened in February 2022 was the culmination of trends that have developed over the past decades, said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko. “We were waiting for this, preparing for it, but it was difficult to be fully ready for such dramatic and tectonic shifts.” Now the world is completely different - the era of Western dominance is ending, new centres of power are emerging among the countries of the Global South, and Russia occupies a special place as a Eurasian power with its own geopolitical priorities, he stressed.

💬 Vladimir Chizhov, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defence and Security, presented a brief outline of the situation in Europe. He noted that Europe today prefers to associate itself more with the Euro-Atlantic than with Eurasia, and called this a conceptual mistake. According to him, Russia has always advocated for the European Union to be an independent centre in a multipolar world, but the Europeans have chosen the opposite path, turning Europe into an appendage of the United States, and the EU into an appendage of NATO. As for relations with Russia, in the eyes of the European Union it gradually turned from a strategic partner first into a strategic opponent, and later into the main enemy. NATO, which had lost its reason for existence, also regained it in the confrontation with Russia.

💬 David Monyae, Director of the Centre for China-Africa Studies at the University of Johannesburg, spoke about Russian-African relations. He recalled that the Soviet Union had played an important role in the liberation of the African continent. In the transition from a US-dominated world order to a multipolar world, the African countries prefer to stay away from the struggle between the superpowers; they reject the idea of a zero-sum game, strive for non-alignment and choose neutrality. Africa and Russia are united by the fact that they advocate respect for strategic interests and global reforms of international organisations. Russia supports Africa's desire to take a more worthy place in the international system.

💬 Alexey Krivopalov, Senior Research Fellow of the Central Asia Sector, Fellow of the Post-Soviet Studies Centre, IMEMO, raised the issue of military operations in Ukraine and the connection between foreign policy, military-strategic and operational-tactical horizons in this context. According to Krivopalov, while Russia’s foreign policy position looks exceptionally strong, and at the military-strategic level the picture as a whole does not cause concern, then at the operational-tactical level, from the very beginning of the political season under discussion, the unresolved problem of positional balance still remains, and tactics do not have simple recipes for overcoming. He called this a reason to look into the future with cautious optimism.

https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/the-results-of-foreign-policy-season-a-multipolar-whirlpool/

#Multipolarity_and_Connectivity #diplomacy #Russia

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📆 ANNOUNCEMENT: On July 19 at 12:00 Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host an expert discussion dedicated to its 2nd Russian-African Conference, titled “Russia – Africa: Strategy for Cooperation in a Multipolar World”, which will take place on July 24 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The first Russian-African conference was held a year ago in St. Petersburg on the eve of the Russia-Africa summit. Now, with the support of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Tanzania and the Russian House in Dar es Salaam, the Valdai Club African conference will be held for the first time on African soil. More than 40 Club experts from Russia and African countries, as well as representatives of the political, expert and media community of Tanzania will take part.

During the discussion, two expert publications will be presented, prepared especially for discussion at the conference in Tanzania. The Valdai Club report “Russia-Africa Cooperation: Outlook and Objectives”, examines the first results of the development of Russian-African relations after last year’s summit in St. Petersburg, the progress of the implementation of the Summit decisions and priority tasks for the future.

The second expert publication is the Valdai Paper “Tanzanian New Ground for Russian Businesses. Prospects for Cooperation in Agriculture”. The text is devoted to the important and topical issue of Russia’s contribution to ensuring food security in African countries using the example of Tanzania.

❓What has been achieved in the year since the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg?
❓How has the expansion of BRICS affected the Russian-African dialogue?
❓What are the prospects for the transition to new financial mechanisms in mutual settlements?
❓In what ways do the approaches of Russia and African countries to the problems of climate change, the fight against poverty and inequality in the world coincide?

Participants in the discussion will try to answer these and other questions.

🎙️ Speakers:

🇷🇺 Oleg Ozerov, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs @MFARussia; Head of the Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum

🇷🇺 Mayya Nikolskaya, acting Director of the Centre for African Studies at MGIMO

🇪🇬 Nourhan ElSheikh, professor of political science at Cairo University; Member of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs

🇿🇦 Mikatekiso Kubayi, PhD, Researcher at UNISA Institute for Global Dialogue, South Africa

🇷🇺 Daria Ilyenko, acting Head of the Russian House

Moderator:

🗣 Oleg Barabanov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club

https://valdaiclub.com/events/announcements/valdai-club-to-discuss-russia-africa-cooperation-in-a-multipolar-world/

Working languages: Russian, English.

ℹ️ Information for the media: In order to get accredited for the event, please fill out the form on our web site. If you have any questions about the event, please call +79269307763

A link to the live broadcast of the discussion will be posted on all online platforms of the Valdai Club: on the Twitter, Telegram and Zen.

#AfricanValdai #Africa

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