Russia Archive

In late January, Yemen’s foreign minister, Abdul-malik al-Mekhlafi, traveled to Moscow where he met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. As they discussed the implementation of an elusive peace settlement in Yemen, Lavrov emphasized Russia’s willingness to mediate between rival Yemeni factions. Lavrov’s somewhat surprising announcement was followed up days later by a statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, offering to broker talks in the burgeoning conflict between separatists in southern Yemen and the forces of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, whose president is in exile in Saudi Arabia. Until recently, Russia has maintained a diplomatic presence in Yemen’s […]

Editor's Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. In its 2017 annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom called out Russia for creating an increasingly repressive environment for religious minorities. While the report did not put Russia on the U.S. watchdog’s list of most egregious violators, it did recommend for the first time that Russia be designated a “country of particular concern.” In an email interview, Eugene Clay, head of the religious studies faculty at Arizona State University and a scholar on religion in Russia, discusses […]

Editor’s note: This is a special Wednesday edition of Diplomatic Fallout. Judah Grunstein will return with Balance of Power next week. There is a long history of bold ideas for peacekeeping missions that never quite took off. In 1936, British officials considered deploying 10,000 peacekeepers to the Rhineland as a buffer force between France and an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany. In 1969, the Irish foreign minister called for a United Nations force to counter mounting sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland. London said no. In January 2009, in one of its very last foreign policy initiatives, the outgoing George W. Bush […]

Saudi Arabia and Russia are gushing over their budding relationship. In a series of recent interviews, the Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, and his Russian counterpart, Alexander Novak, expressed soaring optimism over the future of their countries’ ties, and not just in managing oil markets. “Think of it as a relationship that is in decades and even in generations,” al-Falih told his CNBC interviewers in Davos, Switzerland on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum last month. Forged after the 2014 collapse in world energy prices, the unlikely partnership between the two Cold War-era adversaries is based first and foremost […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss a tale of two corruption scandals in Israel and South Africa. For the Report, Mackenzie Weinger talks with Andrew Green about why Finland is in the vanguard of efforts to counter Russia’s use of hybrid threats to undermine Western democracies. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get some of our uncompromising analysis delivered twice a week straight to your inbox. The […]

HELSINKI, Finland—Tucked away in an unassuming office building near Helsinki’s waterfront, a group of around 10 academics and government officials—most of them Finns—spend long days and nights tracking disinformation and influence operations emanating from neighboring Russia. They make up a newly formed research and strategy unit tasked with lifting the veil on a range of security threats that blend conventional and unconventional tactics. The European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, known as the Hybrid CoE, was founded last year in Helsinki by a dozen member states of the European Union and NATO. It defines hybrid threats as the […]

In late December, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had a tense meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, during a visit to Moscow—the first by a British foreign secretary in five years. Johnson and Lavrov clashed over allegations of Russian meddling in European elections and the U.K.’s Brexit referendum. Lavrov admitted it was “not a secret” that the relationship between Russia and the U.K. was at a “very low point.” In an email interview, Duncan Allan, an associate fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House in London, discusses the nature of the tensions, their economic impact and […]