The Global Agora

"We have to be extremely careful making preliminary judgments about what is really happening on the ground." This is what Franz-Stefan Gady said to me when I asked him if Russia gets anything militarily right when attacking Ukraine and how Ukrainian forces are doing. My guest is a Research Fellow for Cyber, Space and Future Conflict at The International Institute for Strategic Studies. What is his...

Christopher Chivvis is a Senior Fellow and Director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He most recently served as the U.S. national intelligence officer for Europe. "The course of the war is notoriously difficult to predict," he said to me when I asked him about what we could expect in regards to the Russian invasion against Ukraine. But we have tried to talk a...

How many people are arriving? What is their motivation? And could it help Ukraine which is under Russia's attack? All of these questions are related to the establishment of the International Legion of Territorial Defense. Trying to find the answers, I talked to Kacper Kerawek . He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. His book Brown...

Maria Avdeeva  is a Research Director at the European Expert Association where she focuses on international security, cooperation of Ukraine with the EU and NATO, combating hybrid threats, and emerging security challenges. For years she was fighting Russia's disinformation war against Ukraine. From February 24th is her country under military invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin and Maria s...

The number of casualties is growing as Russia wages its war in Ukraine. Will President Vladimir Putin escalate even further and why does he talk about nuclear weapons? I talked to Mark Galeotti who is, as his Twitter bio says, an analyst of murky topics from Russian politics to global crime. Dr. Galeotti is the director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence. He is also an Honorary P...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man of dark emotions. But it's good that the West still engages with Moscow diplomatically. This is what Andrei Kolesnikov thinks. He is a Senior Fellow and the Chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center . We talked about Putin's decision system. if he listens to somebody and what it all means for th...

Maria Avdeeva lives in Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers from the Russian border. She is a Research Director at the European Expert Association where she focuses on international security, cooperation of Ukraine with the EU and NATO, combating hybrid threats, and emerging security challenges. I talked to her on February 13 when we debated extremely tense situation as the Russian troops are surrounding U...

To use her own words, she a disaster researcher and scientist for fiction with irrepressible curiosity about our wonderfully weird universe. This is how Mika McKinnon introduces yourself. If you listen to my podcast regularly, and I hope you do, you know that I usually cover foreign policy events and trends. But not exclusively, so this is an episode about disasters. Mika McKinnon is a perfect gue...

According to current polls, less than 50 percent of Finns oppose the membership of their country in NATO. This is for the first time ever. Is it caused by Russian actions? I talked to Charly Salonius-Pasternak , a leading researcher in The Center on US Politics and Power at Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Does it mean that Finland will apply for NATO membership any time soon? And if it...

What does French President Emmanuel Macron mean when he says that Europeans should work on proposals to build a new security and stability order in Europe? These words are somewhat similar to those the West hears from Kremlin. But is there any connection? I talked to Georgina Wright , a Senior Fellow and Director of Institut Montaigne’s Europe Program. We talked about Paris-Moscow relations, what...

The world tennis number one Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on January 16 and that means he is unable to defend his Australian Open title from the previous year. For now he also lost the chance to become the record Grand Slam holder. The Serbian tennis player is unvaccinated but he received a medical exemption to enter Australia. But in the end his visa was revoked twice and the fe...

The US-Russia bilateral meeting, NATO-Russia Council meeting and the OSCE talks. Can a flurry of diplomatic activities change something, or will Russia invade Ukraine? How much should we be concerned also about the possibility of bigger conflict between NATO and Russia? I talked to  John Deni , Research Professor of Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) Security Stud...

Are you afraid of a civil war in America? "I don't fear civil war so much, as I fear more of the riots, more of the kind of violence we saw on the Capitol." This is what Professor Emerita of Communication at Saint Louis University Diana Carlin told me. We discussed what happened on January 6th, 2021 when a mob of supporters of at that time President Donald Trump attacked the United States Cap...

Every forecast is tricky but we are trying anyway. Marc Julienne is Head of China Research within the Centre for Asian Studies of the French Institute of International relations (IFRI) and we discussed what to expect from communist regime in Beijing in 2022 especially on the international scene. What will be the main trends in the US-China and in the EU-China relations? How much is Dr. Julienne co...

On December 20 Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová traveled to military base Ādaži in Latvia. I also had a chance to visit NATO Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) multinational battalion that consists of a framework nation Canada and of Albania, Czech Republic, Iceland, Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. The Slovak contingent is currently made of 135 soldiers. On the occasion of P...

"You are entering this Panthéon because although you were born American there is no one more French than you". This is what President Emmanuel Macron said when he paid a tribute to Josephine Baker as she was inducted into France's Panthéon in Paris at the end of November. She becomes the first Black woman and just the sixth woman being immortalized there. Baker was born in St. Louis,...

After 16 years it's clear that the German Chancellor can be also... a man. Christian Democrat Angela Merkel is gone and Germany and the world have some questions. What to expect from the traffic light coalition led by Olaf Scholz that consists of his SPD, Greens and liberal FDP? Will Scholz be able to manage his government and what kind of role he could play on the European and global scene? In Se...

The aim of the UK COP26 Presidency was to keep alive the hope of limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5C, and the Glasgow Climate Pact does just that. Combined with increased ambition and action from countries, 1.5C remains in sight, but it will only be achieved if every country delivers on what they have pledged. This is what the Glasgow Climate Pact from 2021 United Nations Climate Chang...

On November 24th, at least 27 people, including women and children, died trying to cross the English Channel in a small boat. A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin has become the first victim of this tragedy to be named. “Her story is the same as everyone else – she was looking for a better life," said one of her relatives for the Guardian. Was this tragedy preventable?...

Presidential and legislative elections in Libya should take place on December 24th. While we read headlines about candidates such as Saif Gaddafi, the problems run deeper. At least according to Jalel Harchaoui who is a Senior Fellow at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime where he concentrates his work on North Africa. He emphasizes that the legal framework for the...

On one hand this is a hybrid attack against the European Union from Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko with Russia's shadow looming over the situation. On the other hand, this is also a humanitarian crisis that shows that the EU asylum system hardly works. Thousands of migrants and refugees are stranded along the EU's borders with Belarus affecting Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Does it have a q...

Is this a make or break moment? As the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference better known as COP26 just started and will take place in Glasgow till November 12th, the question is if political leaders will use the event to effectively move forward when addressing the climate emergency. "This is a chance for all these countries to show leadership, this is the point where they have to stand u...

Bond. James Bond, Part 2. Yes, this is the second part of my conversation about James Bond's past, present and future with Martin D. Brown , Associate Professor of International History at Richmond University in London who is also a bondologist. The first part was published on October 19th. Bond was called a blunt instrument by his novelist father Ian Fleming. Would this blunt...

Bond. James Bond. If you listen to my podcast The Global Agora regularly, you already know that I discuss a variety of things with various experts. And it's no time to die, it's time to debate the James Bond franchise. I have to admit that I am a big fan of 007 and I am happy to welcome Martin D. Brown , Associate Professor of International History at Richmond University in London. And he is also...

Conservative MP Sir David Amess was murdered on October 15th. I tried to look at this case with the assistance of Shaun McDaid . He is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Criminology, Politics and Sociology at the University of Huddersfield. Dr. McDaid's research primarily relates to political violence and its prevention and post-conflict transitions. We  talked more broadly about the threat...