Russia has had a strong military presence in Syria ever since 2015, bolstering the regime of Bashar al-Assad and pushing back the rebels. But in the space of a few days this month, the rebels were able to take major cities including Damascus and overthrow the government. Assad was forced to flee the country and seek refuge in Moscow. What does this mean for Russia, which had invested a lot of resources in Syria and used it as a bargaining chip in the power play in the Middle East? What will the fallout be from this sudden change of political climate?
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Arkady Ostrovsky, Russia and Eastern Europe editor for The Economist, to discuss the role of Victory Day in Russia and how it has evolved under Putin.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and one of the most sought-after analysts of the battlefield dynamics in Ukraine, to discuss the situation on the ground and the trajectory of the war.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Tatiana Mikhailova, an economist and visiting assistant professor at Penn State University, to make sense of the trade war initiated by Washington.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Balazs Jarabik, an alumnus of the Carnegie Endowment and former head of the political analysis and coordination department at the EU’s advisory mission to Ukraine, to discuss the situation inside the war-torn country as the U.S. embarks on separate talks with Russia and Ukraine.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Yanmei Xie, an independent researcher, and David Rennie, the geopolitics editor at The Economist, to discuss the theory behind the recent pivot in U.S. foreign policy toward Russia.