Russia

The Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School hosted a virtual conversation with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba Wednesday (Feb. 22) to discuss the war in Ukraine as it reaches a full year since Russia's invasion. 

U.S. President Joe Biden spent five hours in the Ukrainian capital on Monday, meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky and even taking a stroll through the streets of Kyiv – despite the sound of air sirens – to visit The Wall of Remembrance, which displays portraits of the approximately 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers who have died since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The trip was kept under a media blackout until a few hours after Biden’s arrival, with the president’s official schedule only saying he would fly in the evening to Warsaw for a planned visit. The New York Times reported, quoting an anonymous official source, that Biden arrived in Kyiv early this morning after making the same 10-hour long journey from Poland that every world leader visiting Ukraine since the start of the war has.

Annalena Baerbock was born the same year as Germany's Green Party, then a fringe mix of peace activists, environmentalists, equal rights campaigners and members of the anti-nuclear movement, skeptical of Western power.

Forty years later — espousing a foreign policy generally in sync with the Biden administration — she hopes to lead the much-transformed Greens to an election win in September as Germany begins a new political era without Angela Merkel at the helm.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning the West. In his State of the Union address, he announced that he would react swiftly and harshly if provoked by other countries. Relations between Russia, the US, and the EU are strained, and there are several points of contention: the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and Putin's actions against his imprisoned critic, Alexei Navalny. 

How can the so-called East-West conflict be defused? What hope is there for normalization of the US-Russia relationship under President Joe Biden? [translated from German; interview in German]

The controversial and costly Nord Stream 2 pipeline is intended to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. As it nears completion, European countries and the U.S. continue to disagree over the advantages and disadvantages – and possible security threats – of the pipeline.

We asked some of our transatlantic, Russia, and energy-focused experts to share their thoughts on the implications of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for Europe's security and energy supply, transatlantic relations, and policy toward Russia, as well as what actions the U.S. and European countries should take at this point.  

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes join Andrea Mitchell to talk about Biden's next steps on Iran and Russia. Burns says that Biden's "speech today at the Munich Security Conference has put the United States squarely back on center stage globally."

American officials in China, Cuba and Russia say U.S. agencies are concealing the true extent of the episodes, leaving colleagues vulnerable to hostile actions abroad.

For months, the coronavirus has crawled across the globe. One person at a time, it has passed through millions, reaching every corner of the earth. And it has not only infected people, but every aspect of our human cultures. Policymakers and the public sector face their biggest test in generations—some say ever—as lives and livelihoods hang in a terrible, delicate balance. Facing health crises, economic collapse, social and political disruption, we try to take stock of what the pandemic has done and will do. We asked Harvard Kennedy School faculty, in fields ranging from climate change to international development, from democracy to big power relations, to tell us how this epochal event has changed the world.

Few nations elicit such fatalism among American policymakers and analysts as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For some, the country is an irredeemable pariah state, responsive only to harsh punishment and containment. Others see a wronged and resurgent great power that deserves more accommodation. Perspectives vary by the day, the issue, and the political party. Across the board, however, resignation has set in about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, and Americans have lost confidence in their own ability to change the game.

The panel considers how the US, UK and EU can contribute to a global response. It also asks what a global response to the health and economic crisis in the developing world would look like.