🌎🌏 August 24 marks six months since the announcement by the leadership of the Russian Federation of a special military operation in Ukraine.

It and the response of the West have formed a fundamentally new geopolitical and geo-economic reality; not only for the warring parties, but for the whole world.

❓What are the results of this first half of the new reality?

🌀 One of them is related to the much more pronounced polarisation of power in world politics. First of all, of course, between Russia and the West. The Western countries have imposed extremely rigid sanctions against Russia. In response, Russia has significantly expanded its official list of unfriendly states. Also, the Western countries openly support the strategy of promoting a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield.

However, we agree that the notorious red line between indirect support and direct participation is becoming more and more blurred with each new stage of hostilities.

🌀 The very course of hostilities in relation to the current stage is also, in our subjective opinion, limited. In many ways, it has come down to a classic artillery duel at the tactical level. 

🌀 A new geopolitical rift has emerged, and not only between Russia and the West. It has affected almost all countries and regions of the world. The expressed position of the Western countries in the first months of the conflict reflects the Bolshevik principle “He who is not with us is against us.” These countries have pressured virtually every major non-Western country to support sanctions against Russia. However, most of them have refused to do this, trying either to take a position of equidistance in this conflict (at least outwardly), or at least not to be directly involved in it.

Thus, the current conflict has contributed, if not to the consolidation of the Non-West, at least to its more pronounced distancing from the West than before.

The intensification of discussions on the expansion of the BRICS and SCO that occurred after February 24 is also a manifestation of this.

🌀 Another aspect of the past six months is related to the assessment of Russia's importance in the global economic system. Before the start of the conflict, one could meet polar points of view on this issue, both overestimates and underestimates (such as the notion of it being a “gas station country”). The result of the new reality was clear: fears about the coming global energy and food crisis, about a global recession, about inflation and rising prices.

🌀 The question of the role of the individual in history also took its place in understanding the new reality.

Narratives that “politicians are no longer the same”, that in today’s world there are no Churchills or De Gaulles, there’s no Mahatmas Gandhi, have appeared quite often before. This happened regardless of how much it corresponds to reality, and how much it is generally possible to correctly compare politicians of different eras and generations. In addition, it is clear that such idealisation and glorification of the politicians of the past can also turn out to be a historical myth. The parties did not hear each other, not only because of the opposing geopolitical interests that they defended, but also because of value differences, multiplied by interpersonal perception.

The dynamics of processes, of course, may change in the future. But the general trend is a serious one, and set to remain for a long time, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

📌 This article was prepared for the Valdai Club expert discussion, titled “Half a year in a new reality: How has the world changed after February 24?”, which will take place on August 25 at 16:30. Watch the broadcast on our website.

#Norms_and_Values

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⏰ TODAY at 4:30 pm, Moscow Time (GMT+3), the Valdai Club will host an expert discussion, titled “Half a year in a new reality: How has the world changed since February 24?”

❓What international political changes did Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine lead to?
❓What factors will determine the shape of the emerging world order?
❓What position will Russia, China and the United States occupy in it?

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

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

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UPD: The livestream is over. The video of the discussion is available via the same link. Stay tuned!

🎥 LIVE: at 4:30 pm, Moscow Time (GMT+3) we are starting an expert discussion, titled “Half a year in a new reality: How has the world changed since February 24?”

https://vk.com/video-214192832_456239027

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📷 On August 25, the Valdai Club held an expert discussion, titled “Half a year in a new reality: How has the world changed since February 24?”

Photo gallery of the discussion is available on VK.

The video of the discussion is available via this link.

Stay tuned!

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🌐 Six Months in a New Reality: The World Is at a Dangerous Crossroads

On August 25th, the Valdai Club held an expert discussion, titled “Half a year in a new reality: How has the world changed since February 24th?” 

Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for the Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, moderated the event.

💬 Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, stressed that Russia's "European choice" was a matter of the past. “It will never be like it was six months ago,” he added, explaining that Russia, of course, has not abandoned those universal values that are commonly called European ones, but the former “fixation” on relations with the West will no longer exist. Analysing the current situation, Kosachev identified three trends. First, with the departure of Western players from the Russian market, Russia received a second chance after 1991 for independent development. Second, the myth about the unipolar model being beneficial for all countries of the world collapsed. Third, the idea of multi-polarity has been revived. 

💬 Dimitri Simes, President of Washington’s Center for the National Interest, noted that the world is now at a dangerous crossroads, reminiscent of the times of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sixty years ago, the parties were able to move beyond this crossroads because, despite all their differences, they demonstrated responsibility and political restraint. However, in our time, "healthy forces" are not in power, and Western elites generally do not make a good impression, which significantly increases the risks. However, according to Simes, there is still hope for constructive diplomacy and for the the American administration to demonstrate pragmatism, which can push it to try to resume its dialogue with Moscow following the midterm elections.

💬 Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), pointed out that the start of the military operation in Ukraine was a milestone, but in general, the transition is of a fundamental nature; it was reflected in a number of regional conflicts, the coronavirus pandemic, and energy resource price volatility. He believes that another important factor is the ongoing attempt to consolidate the West, caused not only by the challenges associated with Russia, but also by the Chinese challenge, the activity of the Global South, and the pressure of global development problems. In fact, he argued, we are talking about an attempt to slow down the movement towards multi-polarity and restore the order that existed at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one - with the world centre, the world periphery and large semi-peripheral countries. However, this model does not look sustainable, and the period of consolidation is likely to be short-lived. “We are moving towards a system where multilateralism will have better prospects than the attempts at unilateral domination that we are seeing today,” Kortunov said.

💬 Nelson Wong, Vice Chairman and Executive Director at the Shanghai Centre for RimPac Strategic and International Studies, also acknowledged that the situation is dangerous, noting that the conflict in Ukraine is turning into a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO - or the collective West. He sees no prospects for a consensus being reached between the main players in the near future. At the same time, according to Wong, Russia can emerge from the conflict with losses, but is unlikely to be defeated - at least it is currently fulfilling its goals and objectives. He expressed hope that the world order would eventually become more democratic and balanced, and that Russia's actions would be the beginning of a global awakening that would end American hegemony.

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🌎🌏 How can all peace-seeking forces achieve a breakthrough from Asia, given the current confrontational situation in Europe?

Valdai Club expert Feng Shaolei draws our attention to some deep trends in the current changing environment:

1️⃣ First, for many years, there was a popular belief that the United States is not capable of fighting two wars at the same time - with Moscow and with Beijing. However, it seems that Washington will not give up its attempt to weaken Russia through support for Ukraine, and views China as its main rival.

As the the US continues to shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific region and strengthen its alliances in the region, Asia will move further in the direction of "Europeanisation."

2️⃣ Second, with the approach of the US midterm elections, inflationary pressure there is increasing, and the results of opinion polls for John Biden remain unsatisfactory. Therefore, on the one hand, the United States continues to exert military pressure on Russia, hoping to break the resistance of its long-term strategic adversary. On the other hand, over the past two months, Washington has repeatedly signalled that it is not seeking victory, but a final solution to the Ukraine problem through peaceful negotiations.

3️⃣ Third, in parallel with the promotion of its special military operation, Russia is using energy and financial instruments to effectively counter the West; the entire state apparatus is functioning normally. The reality is that not only hasn’t Russia been defeated, on the contrary, it will continue to influence the development of regional and international processes as a great power.

It is necessary to consider how to create an Asian regional structure step-by-step in order to avoid a repetition of the tragedy of Europe in Asia, the expert writes.

#Asia_and_Eurasia #geopolitics #worldorder

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⚖️🌎 We see the double-character of nearly all so-called Western values and ideologies.

They were born in the West, because the West dominated the world for five centuries. They are claimed by the West, but they are more often betrayed by it. There is a trap in classifying the values themselves as Western or Eastern too readily. 

By using democratic slogans to justify imperialist interventions, the West has done enormous damage to the ideas of democracy and human freedom and rights.

The basic justification of every policy of the West is the ideology of ecumenism the West is projecting, full of complacency and arrogance. However, it is a false ecumenism, as it corresponds only to the narrow interests of the Western ruling classes, not the interests of humanity, writes Valdai Club expert Dimitris Konstantakopoulos.

📌 This article was written as a follow-up to the author’s presentation at the expert discussion “The Global Ideological and Spiritual Landscape and Russia’s Place on the New Values Map of the World”.

#Norms_and_Values #ecumenism #West

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🇰🇵 The recent launches have clearly demonstrated that the DPRK has finally become a nuclear power.

North Korea is becoming or has already become the third country in the world — after Russia and China — that is capable of delivering a nuclear strike on US territory.

On the Korean peninsula today there is a real deadlock situation. However, it will not come to a direct military conflict. None of the participants in the current confrontation is interested in a military conflict.

North Korea will not start a military conflict, because it knows that in this case it will be subjected to a nuclear strike by the United States, which is bound by allied obligations with South Korea. But the United States will not start a conflict either, writes Valdai Club expert Gleb Ivashentsov.

#ModernDiplomacy #DPRK

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🔎⚔️🗞 Most analysts in the West have developed a special kind of moral blindness, which is rooted in the feeling of being chosen; the ideological, moral superiority of the Western model of development.

They believe that they are advancing at a high speed along the path of progress, that there is a right side of history, and that the movement along it justifies the means by which this progress is achieved. They value civilian deaths quite differently depending on which side they represent. This is a special type of hypocrisy — to divide people into those who are on the right side of history and who are on the wrong side of history.

At the initial stage of the current phase of the crisis in the West, analysts began to play the role of activists and rhetorically exclaim: “how is that?”, “no war”, and “we are for peace.” For them, there is only one participant in the conflict worthy of support — Ukraine, which is on the right side of history. Accordingly, its missile attacks on Donbass and Russian territory are righteous. There was not a single sympathetic statement in the West regarding the murder of pro-Russian citizens in Odessa on May 2, 2014.

The tacit acceptance of a consistent defeat of the rights of Russians in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia, and Western experts will not find understanding in Moscow until they stop looking at the problem selectively, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Andrey Sushentsov.

#ModernDiplomacy #Ukraine #West

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🇹🇷 As the spirit of the Cold War haunts current global politics with the spiraling down crisis, Turkey’s position represents a unique case.

From the beginning, Turkey pursued a balanced strategy and kept its dialogue channels open both with Moscow and Kiev.

As a NATO member state, Turkey principally avoided from pursuing the West's sanction regime. Moreover, Ankara kept its economic and political channels open with its Black Sea neighbors. Turkey’s balanced policy bored its fruits recently.

There is a need for further constructive approach from other parties as in the case of the grain corridor agreement. Otherwise, it is obvious that the winter of 2022 will be harsher for any actor linked with the conflict, writes Valdai Club expert Hasan Selim Özertem.

#Asia_and_Eurasia #Turkey

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📆 #EEF2022: The Valdai Discussion Club will take part in the business programme of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) for the sixth time.

💡 On September 6 at 10:00 local time (GMT+10), the Club will hold a session titled “Gateway to the Multipolar World. The Far East in the New Architecture of International Relations”.

For several years the focus in world politics and economics has been shifting towards Asia. The development of relations with Asia is one of the central focal points of Russia’s foreign policy. Taking into account the crisis that broke out this year in relations with the West, for Russia the development of ties with the Asian region is of strategic importance. Today we are witnessing how the Russian Far East is gradually turning not just into “Russia’s gateway to Asia” but into “the gateway to the multipolar world”. Unlike the Western world, there are no countries in the Asian region that would claim world domination. Despite the fact that Asia’s political consolidation is far behind that of the West, the region occupies a central place in the emerging system of multipolarity.

According to the Valdai Club, the Far East should become a kind of “interface” for interaction between Russia and Asia. It is there that the main practices and skills of Russia’s interaction with partners in the multipolar world will be formed and developed.

The Valdai Club session will be a logical continuation of the Club’s series of events within the framework of the EEF, which were dedicated to Russia’s pivot to the East. It will be political and economic in nature, and will bring together the representatives of public authorities, business, the expert community and academic circles.

Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation of the Valdai Discussion Club, will make an opening speech at the beginning of the session.

👥 Speakers:

🇷🇺 Anastasia Likhacheva, Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE University

🇮🇳 B.K. Sharma, major general (ret.), director of the United Services Institution

🇷🇺 Natalia Stapran, Director of the Department for Multilateral Economic Cooperation and Special Projects, Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation

🇷🇺 Yury Trutnev, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation – Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District

🇨🇳 Wang Wen, Executive Dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies (RDCY), Deputy Dean of Silk Road School, Renmin University of China

Moderator:

🚩 Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation of the Valdai Discussion Club

Working languages: Russian, English.

📍 Venue: Far Eastern Federal University, Building B, Conference Hall No. 6, Vladivostok.

ℹ️ Entrance to the event is open to the EEF participants and journalists accredited at the Forum.

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📆 #EEF2022: On September 6 at 12:30 local time (GMT+10), the Valdai Club will present a report at EEF-2022, titled “Russia-China Strategic Partnership in the Context of the Crisis in Europe”.

The Valdai Club, with the participation of employees of the HSE Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, became the first research centre in Russia to conduct an in-depth analysis of Russian-Chinese relations following the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

📌 The main purpose of the report is to analyse how the dynamics of bilateral relations have changed, to establish the limits of the influence of Western sanctions on the interaction between Moscow and Beijing, and the instruments and scope of interaction between the parties at the present time.

Against the backdrop of the increasingly unfriendly behaviour of the United States and other Western countries, as well as their attempts to impose their vision of the world order, the partnership between Moscow and Beijing has taken on a new meaning.

According to the authors of the report, the developments of recent months have dispelled arguments about the “fragility” of relations between Russia and China; they have shown that the parties share a common strategic vision and a willingness to support each other. The dynamics of interaction between China and Russia in recent months is not related to the Ukrainian crisis, but follows from the natural state of a long-term strategic partnership, the report emphasises.

👥 Speakers:

🔹 Anastasia Likhacheva, Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE University

🔹 Evgeny Markin, Executive Director of the Russian-Chinese Business Council

🔹 Wang Wen, Executive Dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies (RDCY), Deputy Dean of Silk Road School, Renmin University of China

Moderator:

🚩 Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation of the Valdai Discussion Club

Working language: Russian, English.

📍 Venue: Far Eastern Federal University, Building A, Level 11, Roscongress Club, Vladivostok

ℹ️ Entrance to the event is open to EEF participants and journalists accredited at the Forum.

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🌏 Now, when the contours of the sanctions restrictions of the collective West in relation to Russia have taken their almost-complete shape, the need for a revision of the system of Russian foreign economic relations is becoming obvious.

In the context of the forced break and undocking of many previously seemingly unshakable economic ties with the EU countries, Russian state and business structures have much more actively than before begun to pay attention to the geographically more distant, but so far politically relatively neutral nations of Southeast Asia, united as the ASEAN trade bloc.

However, are there any real grounds that amid the new geo-economic and geopolitical conditions, Russia and the ASEAN countries will be able to build up economic cooperation, and perhaps even elevate it to a qualitatively new level? Ekaterina Koldunova tries to answer this question.

#Valdai_WorldEconomy #ASEAN

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🌏 Regardless of the tone of the assessments, the deeds and words of Gorbachev are known to everyone, for the older generations — according to their personal memory, for the current generation of students — on questions from Russia’s Unified State Examination.

And therefore, it is tempting for a historian not to write another text about Gorbachev, of which there have already been so many these days, but to speculate about the forks in history: what would have happened “with the Motherland and with us” if Gorbachev had never existed. We partly referred to these alternatives earlier, in the Valdai Paper “What If… the Soviet Union Had Not Collapsed?”

Whether it is possible to reconcile the “black” and “white” assessments of Gorbachev, only history will show, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

#Norms_and_Values #Gorbachev

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🗝🏰 For the European Union, the benefits of visa restrictions are mainly symbolic.

Visa sanctions are another measure that can be written down as an asset in containing Russia. They can be regarded as a signal that there will be no return to the conditionally pre-February model of relations. The preservation of interpersonal contacts as they existed before does not correspond to current political realities, which means that they can and should be brought to a common and, at the same time, the smallest denominator.

Obviously, calls for a total visa ban for Russians are a form of populism. They come mainly from countries that used to be in the anti-Russian vanguard. However, less radical steps in the form of reducing the number of visas and increasing the processing time for applications may well be sold on the political market as another blow to Russia, as well as be a way of gaining moral self-satisfaction in the fight against it.

Another symbolic plus in the eyes of the EU authorities could be the transformation of a trip to the EU for Russians from an ordinary routine into a hard-to-reach privilege that must be earned. It is possible that the visa policy will become a tool for selecting between “good” Russians and “bad” ones.

The EU’s visa manipulations are sure to irritate, rather than support the majority. They will be seen as yet another step towards the “cancellation of Russia”, and the rhetoric of EU officials will be seen even more as demagogy, indicating weakness rather than strength.

The thesis which is widespread in the intellectual discourse of the EU, that the dissatisfaction of Russians with the reduction in trips to the Union is transforming into dissatisfaction with the authorities, seems naive, writes Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

#EconomicStatecraft #EU #sanctions #visas

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🌐 The main institutions of the Bretton Woods system, which have existed since the Second World War, are rapidly losing their economic weight.

At this time, key actors in the developing world are coming to the fore, calling into question the out-dated rules of the game, including the hegemony of the West.

Instead of destroying the legacy of the last century, they offer an alternative economic system where each player is able to influence important decisions at the international level.

The BRICS countries have proposed their own concept for building the future of financial stability - the New Development Bank, write Maksim Chirkov and Alisa Kazelko.

#Valdai_WorldEconomy #BRICS

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🌏🌎 The BRICS+ summit and the foreign ministers’ BRICS+ meeting in 2022 brought together developing economies that represented regional blocs such as the African Union, CELAC, SCO, GCC and ASEAN.

This in effect was the widest outreach exercise covering the vast majority of the Global South and representing a platform that could prove instrumental in advancing greater economic openness across the developing world.

The key factor that renders the creation of a South-South FTA feasible and in fact expedient is the high degree of undertrading along the “South-South” axis compared to the potential based on distance and respective country GDP levels (indications of the gravity model). Another factor is the “integration gap” — namely the significantly lower scale and quality of integration in the developing world compared to the advanced economies.

The South-South FTA could serve to bridge this gap and foster “catch-up integration” or “integration convergence” vis-à-vis the developed world, writes Yaroslav Lissovolik, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

#Valdai_WorldEconomy #BRICS #GlobalSouth

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