Carnegie Politika Podcast

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.

Changes in foreign trade—the backbone of economic prosperity for Putin’s Russia—reflect the giant shifts in Moscow’s relations with the outside world. Five years after the annexation of Crimea, Russia is moving away from the West and trading less with the EU, while increasing the share of its trade with Asia, in particular with China. Alex Gabuev, a senior fellow and chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, examines the implications of this for Russia, the EU, and the Eurasian Economic Union with podcast guests Tatiana Flegontova, deputy head of the Institute for International Economics and Finance, and Dr. Janis Kluge, a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

In September 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, the outbreak of war in the Donbas, and the introduction of the first Western sanctions against Russia, the Kremlin announced a "pivot to Asia." Five years on, what's the outcome of this policy? Have Russia and China really formed a new, much stronger partnership? Alex Gabuev, a senior fellow and chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, sat down to discuss just that with Vita Spivak, head of analytical projects at the Expert creative agency.