Experts review Russia’s strategic objectives and foreign policy with Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. Welcome to those of you, especially, who have come back after the other sessions. This is the third russian foreign policy 2017 of today’s Council on Foreign Relations Symposium on Russia and the West.

I’m Andrew Nagorski, and I’ll be presiding. Like some of you in the audience and many of you who have talked today, I had various adventures in the old Soviet Union, the new Russia, and we’ll be talking about that today. And, in fact, I even remember in the mid-’90s there was this fleeting moment where some of us who were Moscow correspondents were worried that interest in Russia was really declining and we—no one will want to hear about it anymore. So today’s panel, you have their bios. But, very briefly, on my far left Alina Polyakova from the Atlantic Council, James Nixey from Chatham House, and Jennifer Harris from the Council on Foreign Relations. Maybe I’ll start with a pretty broad question, but again, sort of harkening back to maybe my initial experience in the Soviet Union in the early ’80s when there was—you know, the Soviet Union was very expansive. Obviously, the Soviet empire was large.

It was—it had just—it was just—there had been the Soviet war in Afghanistan, there was the pressure on the Polish regime to crack down on Solidarity, and many other actions in other parts of the world. So what I’d like to ask each of you to at least briefly give a first shot at: If you’re in Putin’s shoes, what—is there a grand strategy here? Or is it—is it simply tactics from crisis to crisis? Maybe, Alina, would you like to start? And thanks to CFR for organizing this symposium.

I think as you were saying, Andrew, even a couple of years ago at a panel like this we wouldn’t have seen such a wide-ranging and engaged audience as we do today, and I think that is testament to the increasing interest in this region again. I think, you know, our task here on this panel is to look at how the world looks like from the point of view of Moscow, from the Kremlin. So, to go directly to your question, there’s been a lot of debate about whether Putin is a strategist, has a long-term view, or whether he’s a tactician and a sophisticated and savvy opportunist. And I think this distinction is actually a bit moot and it doesn’t get us to the questions we all seek. Yes, I think Putin has been very good at identifying power vacuums in various regions of the world, obviously including in what Russia considers its near abroad, the post-Soviet space broadly defined, in the Middle East as well. Western leadership is absent, Russia has found a way to come in and make itself the key mediator, the key arbiter of power relations in that region, to insert itself back onto the world stage.