At the end of 1829, the social scene in St. Petersburg was abuzz about a charming young Persian prince, who had traveled from Tabriz to the Russian Imperial capital with gifts for Tsar Nicholas I and the Romanov family. The journey of Iran’s Khosrow Mirza, the seventh son of Crown Prince `Abbas Mirza, was intended to repair relations between Tehran and Petersburg, following the murder of the diplomat and writer, Aleksandr Griboedov. The mission was major diplomatic success and set the stage for a long-term rapprochement between Russia and Persia, following two major wars over control of the Caucasus in the early 19th century.

Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation

We are approaching yet another epochal anniversary with lessons crucial for the survival and revival of the human race: February 4 to February 11 will mark the 80th anniversary of the most successful peace conference in history – and therefore the most reviled, despised and misunderstood one. The Yalta Summit of 1945.

One of Russia’s top foreign policy experts selects the main things to watch this year

An emerging consensus among U.S. and European security services holds that accidents were the cause of damage to Baltic seabed energy and communications lines.

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise – to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.

It started out rather differently than we now sometimes imagine it. When Vladimir Putin took over the Russian presidency from Boris Yeltsin 25 years ago, on New Year’s Eve 1999, he was seen as a man with whom Washington could do business.

An official inquiry into a notorious 2018 Novichok poisoning case has found the victim briefly emerged from a coma, revealing information which wholly undermined the British government’s narrative. While the medical professional she told was muzzled, mainstream media has ignored the new finding.

The international system during the Cold War was organised under extremely zero-sum conditions. There were two centres of power with two incompatible ideologies that relied on continued tensions between two rival military alliances to preserve bloc discipline and security dependence among allies. Without other centres of power or an ideological middle ground, the loss for one was a gain for the other. Yet, faced with the possibility of nuclear war, there were also incentives to reduce the rivalry and overcome the zero-sum bloc politics.

The “Deep State” continues to pressure the new U.S. Administration to “not give in to any of Moscow’s proposals and create from day one of direct negotiations, a position of strength that will eventually force Moscow to compromise and send a clear message to China, Iran and North Korea that the United States is back in strength and glory.”