"Yeltsin was in a bit of a corner in all of this. I think he himself felt it was an absolute disaster to use a military option against Serbia. Now, were we prepared for this. Were the Americans, I think, sensitive enough to what this was going to mean? No, they weren't. I'm not sure we at the embassy even understood how deeply the reaction was going to go or how effective the people who were Yeltsin's critics were going to be in using what we did in Serbia against him and against the, if you will, the Westerners, but they were and it put them on the defensive and it made it very difficult for ..read more

"We missed the one element of diplomacy that is absolutely critical in balancing some of these very sensitive relationships, and that's a level of connectivity and dialogue that allows both sides to frame the priorities and to get working toward some shared outcomes and solutions. So, in that empty environment, Russia and China came together, each having different interests in coming together." - Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. The Ambassadorial Series is a one-of-a-kind docuseries featuring in-depth interviews with eight of the living former U.S. ambassadors to Russia and the Soviet Union. In eig ..read more

"Russia had also, in the third term of President Putin, really started to turn inward. There was almost a feeling of withdrawal from the world. There were sanctions put on, of course, that blocked visas and tended to isolate Russia. Russia was not accepted into the G7. But there was the Foreign Agents law, there was an aggressive FSB effort to intimidate scientists and people who had foreign contacts. And it became very clear and accelerated during my time there." - Ambassador John F. Tefft The Ambassadorial Series is a one-of-a-kind docuseries featuring in-depth interviews with eight of the l ..read more

"We said we're not going to check our values at the door in order to negotiate with the Russian autocratic regime. We were pretty blunt. If anybody knows me, they know that I speak pretty bluntly about these things, and it's not my first rodeo dealing with Russian officials, 2009, I've been at this for a long time. We didn't call Medvedev a democratic leader of the free world; we didn't praise him. We said, 'We're going to do this deal here, and then we're going to talk about these other things where we have disagreements.'" - Ambassador Michael McFaul The Ambassadorial Series is a one-of-a-ki ..read more

Ambassador Steven Pifer presents his insights on the historical origins of the Russia-Ukraine war, including the Kremlin’s motivations for invading, and predicts the conflict’s future trajectory.   Ambassador Steven Pifer is William J. Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford and was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 25 years, serving in many positions including U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine ..read more

Hans Gutbrod, Associate Professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, elaborates on the ethics of political commemoration, using just war theory to develop a framework for making memory politics more constructive and sustainable ..read more

Andrei Zorin, Professor of Russian and Fellow of New College, Oxford University, discusses Russia’s mythology of supreme power in its traditional and modern iterations as well as the nuances of Russian national identity.  ..read more

Regina Elsner, Andrei Tsygankov, and Zheng Wang discuss the role of emotions, values, and historical memory in international relations and reveal the limitations of rationality-based explanations in particular instances ..read more

Marlene Laruelle and Vuk Vuksanovic discuss the sources of Russian soft power and the Kremlin’s flexible tactics of projecting influence abroad. The discussion focuses in particular on the Balkans, where local actors play a significant role in amplifying Russian narratives.   Marlene Laruelle is Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University.   Vuk Vuksanovic is a senior researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) and an associate at LSE IDE ..read more

Liana Fix explains the international and domestic factors that have shaped Germany’s policy approach toward Russia since the 1990s, particularly in the spheres of security, energy, and conflict resolution.   Dr. Liana Fix is a Program Director at the International Affairs department of Koerber Foundation in Berlin and a former resident fellow in GMF’s Washington office. She is a historian and political scientist, and her work focuses on Russia and Eastern Europe, European security, arms control, and German foreign policy.   The event is moderated by Michael Kimmage ..read more