PRESS RELEASE

Addio alla Russia 

Rome, 30 June 2022 – To tie in with the publication of Aspenia 97 (in Italian), Aspen Institute Italia will be holding an Aspenia Talk on “The future of Russia in the post-global world” in digital mode at 18:00 on Wednesday 6 July.

The panel will be held on the Zoom platform and will be open to the press.

Journalists interested in attending can register to follow the meeting on:

https://aspeninstituteitalia.zoom.us/webinar/register/5716565875157/WN_netAEwJHS66WTI0bCG1jUg

Speakers at the meeting will include: Giulio Tremonti, Chairman, Aspen Institute Italia; Pier Carlo Padoan, President, Unicredit; Andrey V. Kortunov, Director General, Russian International Affairs Council, Moscow; Charles Kupchan, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington; Nathalie Tocci, Director, IAI; Marco Tronchetti Provera, Executive Vice-Presidente and Managing Director, Pirelli.

The severance of our ties with Russia – according to Marta Dassù and Roberto Menotti in the editorial in Aspenia 97 – has been deliberately sought by Vladimir Putin, who sees himself as the saviour of his country’s imperial destiny. In attacking Kyiv on 24 February, however, he made a spectacular error of judgment, triggering a chain of events that has prompted almost all the Western governments to set aside their compliant attitude toward Moscow with surprising speed. Aspenia 97 contains essays by, among others, Sergio Romano, Paul Berman, Ivan Timofeev, Charles A. Kupchan, Marina Valensise, Andrei Kurkov, Anna Zafesova, Adam Posen, Sergio Fabbrini, Shivshankar Menon, Odd Arne Westad, Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, Mario Del Pero and Leopoldo Nuti.

However the war in Ukraine ends, the first thing we need to understand is why the transition from the USSR to Russia has failed. Vladimir Putin has never been fond of the Russian Federation that he inherited from Boris Yeltsin’s transition years. It has never been enough for a man who considers himself the supreme supporter of an imperial Russia which should at least feared, if not respected, by all. That is the ideal that Moscow has been pursuing in recent years from Moldova to the Baltics and from Belarus to the Black Sea and the Middle East. But the Russian Government in power today is an authoritarian regime so corrupt that it even manages to prevent defense spending from producing an efficient army. The second thing we need to understand is this: Will the West, newly consolidated in Kyiv, hold out? In the early stages of the war the United States and Europe discovered an unexpected degree of unity. That is the most important political-cum-strategic result of the war in Ukraine. And Europe, in its turn, bade farewell to its image of Russia as a partner which, though tricky, was nonetheless reliable in terms of energy supplies and in the struggle against terrorism.

The third thing we need to understand is how relations between China and Russia are going to evolve. The global impact of the rift between Russia and the West (and between Russia and the United States’ most important Asian allies – a far from secondary aspect, especially from Beijing’s point of view) is going to depend on the China factor. A major challenge also loomsfor the liberal democratic countries and the international trading system. According to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, we are about to embark on an era of globalization “among friends” that will tend to impart a fresh boost to the transatlantic economic area also in the energy field. The effect of the pandemic first and then of the war in Ukraine has undermined people’s residual faith in the virtues of globalization by shining the spotlight on the price of dependence in strategic sectors. The trend is toward fragmentation, a shorter value chain and a partial technological decoupling between China and the United States.

Stefania Salustri

Head of Communications and Media Relations, Website Director
Tel: 335 7919949
e-mail: stefania.salustri@aspeninstitute.it