On December 17, 2014, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chaired a sitting of the Scientific Council of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs devoted to realization of national foreign policy interests in Europe in the light of tasks set forth by President Vladimir Putin in his December 4 address to the Federal Assembly.
On December 17, 2014, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chaired a sitting of the Scientific Council of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs devoted to realization of national foreign policy interests in Europe in the light of tasks set forth by President Vladimir Putin in his December 4 address to the Federal Assembly.
The attendance included many RIAC members, among them Academician Alexey Arbatov, Head of IMEMO Center for International Security; Academician Vladimir Baranovsky, IMEMO Deputy Director; Alexey Gromyko, Director of RAS Institute for European Studies and Head of Center for British Studies; RAS Associate Member Vladimir Davydov, Director of RAS Institute for Latin American Studies; Executive Director of Gorchakov Center for Support of Public Diplomacy Leonid Drachevsky; Ambassador Alexander Dynkin, IMEMO Director and RAS Full Member; Academician Vitaly Zhurkin, Honorary Director of RAS Institute for European Studies; Sergey Karaganov, Dean of World Economy and World Politics Department at Higher School of Economics; Honorary President of the Presidium of the Council of Foreign and Defense Policy; Eugeny Kozhokin, Professor of History Department at Lomonosov Moscow State University; RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov, President of New Eurasia Foundation; RAS Associate Member Vitaly Naumkin, Director of RAS Institute for Oriental Studies; Vyacheslav Nikonov, Chairman of State Duma Committee on Education, Board Chairman of Russkiy Mir Foundation, and Dean of Public Administration Department at Lomonosov Moscow State University; Alexander Panov, Chief Researcher at RAS Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies; Academician Sergey Rogov, Director of RAS Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies; and Academician Alexander Chubaryan, Director of RAS Institute of World History.
The participants analyzed the political and values-based shifts underway in the European landscape, focusing on the counterproductive and faulty essence of unilateral Western sanctions, the resultant serious crisis and the need to seek a way out jointly through eliminating the division lines in the military, political, economic and humanitarian areas.
Special attention was given to the OSCE that should serve as a tool for uncovering the joint European responses to common challenges. With the global community celebrating this year the 70th anniversary to the end of World War, implementation of the Helsinki principles seems to acquire special importance, as they have been intended to ensure cohesion in the Euro-Atlantic space. Movement in this direction to great extent hinges on political settlement and national consent in Ukraine on the basis of the Minsk Accords.
