Carnegie Politika Podcast

Most new U.S. administrations are greeted with hopes for a new era in U.S.-Russian relations, but does anyone in Russia expect anything positive to come of a Biden presidency? Will a more predictable White House mean fewer or more sanctions against Russia? Elena Chernenko, a special correspondent for Kommersant, and Andrew Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, join podcast host Alexander Gabuev to discuss what the next U.S. administration will mean for Russia.

It’s been relatively quiet on the Korean Peninsula for the past two years, but is this the calm before the storm? What will North Korea do to ensure it remains a U.S. foreign policy priority if Joe Biden wins the U.S. election? What impact has the coronavirus pandemic had on Kim Jong Un’s regime? And how have North Korea’s relations with China gone from rock bottom to best of friends in just three years? Carnegie’s English-language podcast host Alex Gabuev talks to Myong-Hyun Go, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, about where North Korea is headed.

If diplomacy fails to end the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh, what’s next for the troubled region? Turkey escalated the conflict; now can it be the one to deescalate it? And will Turkey’s intervention affect Russian-Turkish cooperation in other parts of the world? Podcast host Alexander Gabuev discusses these questions and more with Tom de Waal, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe and expert on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and Sinan Ülgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.

Podcast host Alexander Gabuev is joined by Yevgeny Preigerman, founder and director of the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations; Nataliya Vasilyeva, Moscow correspondent for The Telegraph; and Oksana Antonenko, director of the Global Political Risk team at the UK-based Control Risk consultancy and a member of the EU-Russia Expert Network on Foreign Policy (EUREN). They discuss the violent crackdown on protests in Belarus and its consequences, Lukashenko’s long-term prospects, whether the opposition can possibly win, the role of Russia and the West in the ongoing protests, and more.

The coronavirus pandemic has only intensified the rivalry between the United States and China, hastening the advent of a new era of bipolarity. How can Russia maintain equilibrium and avoid being drawn into the U.S.-China confrontation as a junior partner of China? Will the collapse of oil prices and subsequent loss of revenue force Russia to rein in its ambitious foreign policy of recent years? Are there renewed hopes for progress in the Donbas peace talks? And will the Kremlin finally be forced to turn its focus to domestic affairs? Carnegie Moscow Center director Dmitri Trenin and Elena Chernenko, a special correspondent at the Kommersant publishing house, join podcast host Alexander Gabuev to discuss these issues and more.

China deployed an array of digital surveillance tools as part of its response to the coronavirus outbreak. Russia is trying to use similar technology but with mixed results. The rapid embrace of such tools is sparking an international debate about the impact on privacy and the need for protections and oversight. In this episode of the Carnegie Moscow Center podcast, Alex Gabuev discusses how digital surveillance tools and facial recognition technologies are being used in the post-Soviet space in the age of COVID-19 with China watcher Leonid Kovachich; Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program; and Steven Feldstein, a nonresident fellow in the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.

Russia-China relations get a lot of coverage in Moscow, but what’s the view from Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East? Carnegie’s Alex Gabuev talks to Ivan Zuenko, an expert on the Sino-Russian relationship, about the real scale of the Chinese presence in Russia’s Far East, attitudes among both Chinese and Russian people to one another, the Belt and Road initiative, and more. This is a joint episode with Evan Feigenbaum's China Local/Global podcast: https://soundcloud.com/carnegie-audio/asia-localglobal-ivan-zuenko

Could Coronavirus actually be a boost for the Chinese government? Is it better to be spied on by China or the United States? Is Russia really serious about its pivot to Asia? Carnegie’s Alex Gabuev and The Financial Times’ Asia editor Jamil Anderlini discuss the impact of Coronavirus on the Russian economy, how the virus is influencing the ongoing US-China trade war, and how events in Asia affect the choices European countries are making.

In this episode of the Carnegie Moscow Center podcast, host Alex Gabuev talks to two foreign correspondents currently based in Moscow. Robyn Dixon recently returned to Russia as head of the Washington Post Moscow bureau, having previously worked here for eight years through 2003. Our other guest is Max Seddon of the Financial Times, who has been working in Russia since 2012. Together they discuss what it's like to be a foreign journalist in Moscow, what has changed in the last 20 years, the differences in reporting from China and Russia, and how to deliver the most accurate and least biased story from Russia under the current circumstances.

In December, Gazprom launched its 8,000-km Power of Siberia gas pipeline to China. Sergei Kapitonov, an energy analyst at the Skolkovo School of Management, talks to Carnegie Moscow Center's Alexander Gabuev about the timing of the launch and the prospects and risks of delivering Russian gas to a single buyer.