Carnegie Politika Podcast

“Repression is spreading like gas in a room: as long as there’s space there, it’s going to expand.” What’s Alexander Lukashenko’s game plan in Belarus? Could the West have done more when protests broke out last year, and does it have any tools to impact the situation there now? Is there any alternative to Lukashenko that would be acceptable to Russia, or is any future regime now destined to be anti-Russian? Artyom Shraibman, a non-resident scholar at Carnegie Moscow Center, and Sabine Fischer, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Studies, join podcast host Alex Gabuev to discuss events in Belarus.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Andrey Movchan, a nonresident scholar in the Economic Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, and Maria Shagina, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Zurich, to discuss the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy. After eight years of Western sanctions, has the Russian economy suffered substantially as a result? Do the latest U.S. sanctions in fact show that Washington is ready to turn the page? How successful has Russia’s import substitution been? And how far do sanctions actually play into the Kremlin’s hands at home?

In the wake of the first summit of the Quad countries (the United States, Japan, Australia, and India), this episode of the podcast focuses on the grouping’s scope, its cooperation with other nations, Russia’s significance in the region, and whether the rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing is impacting the long-established relationship between Russia and India. Featuring podcast host Alex Gabuev; Darshana Baruah, an associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and Michito Tsuruoka, an associate professor at Keio University in Tokyo.

Is Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine as successful as the Kremlin claims? Are political considerations really preventing it from getting approval in Western countries? Why is the vaccination rate so low in Russia, and why didn’t Putin get vaccinated sooner? Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Henry Foy, Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times, and Polina Ivanova, a special correspondent for Reuters in Moscow, to discuss these questions and other vaccine-related topics.

How will Russian-Japanese relations be affected by the departure of Japan’s longtime prime minister, Shinzo Abe? What drove his policy of active engagement of Russia, and will that policy continue under his successor? What potential remains for cooperation? Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Taisuke Abiru to discuss these issues and more.

Alex Gabuev is joined by Janka Oertel, director of the Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss changing attitudes in Europe toward China and Russia, and the evolving relationship between Moscow and Beijing.

What are the main risks from the current state of competition between Moscow and Washington? Is there a pragmatic agenda on which both sides are interested in cooperating? What tools can be used to safely manage this great-power competition? Carnegie Moscow Center director Dmitri Trenin and Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, join podcast host Alexander Gabuev to discuss how relations could be reimagined. Trenin and Graham's joint commentary on the same topic can be found here:https://carnegie.ru/commentary/83432

How significant are the mass protests that swept Russia last Saturday and look set to be repeated this weekend? Has the Kremlin lost the battle for people's minds? And how much are these protests really about the opposition leader Alexei Navalny? Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Arkady Ostrovsky, Russia editor at The Economist.

Will China be able to replace Russia as a security provider in Central Asia? What does China bring to the region that Russia has not, and what role is there for Europe and the West there? Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by his Carnegie colleague Temur Umarov and Niva Yau Tsz Yan, a Eurasia Program fellow at the U.S. Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Has the hyping of foreign cyber influence in recent years overshadowed the need to address domestic disinformation? What would a democratic alliance on data regulation look like, and what should its core principles be? Is there a place for authoritarian countries like Russia in that alliance? Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Marietje Schaake, international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center to explore these issues.