The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the German foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung are starting a joint project to analyse the contemporary situation in the Middle East. The project aims to draw up practical recommendations for the Russian and German leadership on setting up constructive cooperation between the two countries in order to help resolve the crisis situation that has developed in the region since the start of the civil war in Syria.
The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the German foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung are starting a joint project to analyse the contemporary situation in the Middle East. The project aims to draw up practical recommendations for the Russian and German leadership on setting up constructive cooperation between the two countries in order to help resolve the crisis situation that has developed in the region since the start of the civil war in Syria. The project includes creating a bilateral Russian-German working group which will analyse the current processes in the region and will also draw up scenarios for how the situation might develop and recommendations for government authorities and other interested bodies.
The first meeting of the working group of experts took place on 24 April 2015 at the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). The meeting was opened by Andrei Kortunov, RIAC director general. Also present at the meeting on behalf of RIAC were Timur Makhmutov, RIAC deputy programme director, Elena Alexeyenkova, RIAC programme manager, and Vladimir Morozov, RIAC programme coordinator. The Russian side at the expert level was represented by Irina Zvyagelskaya, chief researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IOSRAS), Vasily Kuznetsov, director of the Centre for Political Systems and Cultures in the Faculty of World Politics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, and Alexei Sarabyev, head of the academic publishing department at IOSRAS. Taking part on the German side were Rudolf Traub-Merz, head of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung’s branch in Russia, Olga Gladushevskaya, the foundation’s assistant for domestic policy and security policy, Daniel Gerlach, the project’s research coordinator, and Ralf Hexel, head of the Ebert foundation’s Middle East and North Africa department.
The meeting ended with an understanding of the overall structure of the final document. Both sides expressed their willingness to be actively involved in the work aimed at preparing the first draft of a joint report by the end of this year.
The first meeting of the working group
