In an article published four days before the launch of his country’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow-based Director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC)Dr Andrei Kortunov warned of its tragic consequences for Russia. The de facto partition of Ukraine, he said, as a result of the Kremlin’s recognition of the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, will signify ‘the final formalisation of the division of Europe’ from which there may be no easy retreat.
Even with the likelihood of a relatively rapid Russian victory on the battlefield, Kortunov was conjuring a darker and more dangerous East/West confrontational future for his homeland. It is an influential narrative that has been widely re-iterated by media spokespeople both within Russian think-tanks such as RIAC and internationally. For Kortunov, it is one to lament: Relations between Russia and the West will be clarified, he wrote, but it will be the crystal clarity of a cold January dawn, when the scorching north wind takes your breath away and squeezes involuntary tears out of your eyes.
I first met Kortunov in 2017, when he travelled to ANU to address a conference on ‘Russia in the wake of the Cold War’ that I had organized. A gentle, humane man and a formidable scholar of international relations, he has a decades-long commitment to post-Soviet integration into a globalized world. This has meant the pursuit of multilateral diplomacy, commentaries on trends in trade and investment and philanthropic engagements with a long list of organizations, including the International Crisis Group, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Oxfam in Africa.
Under his directorship, RIAC also fosters research collaborations and educational exchanges with policy forums such as the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as with American, British, European and Chinese universities, and with political leaders, not only among his country’s Eurasian neighbours, but globally. A recent Princeton study described the Council as the world’s most influential think-tank on Russian affairs.
Kortunov’s pre-invasion analysis of the impact on Russia and the West of the war in Ukraine has proven to be prescient. The Putin government has become an international pariah, with virtually no allies or, at least sympathetic observers in the West. Even China, with whom it allegedly has close ties, is currently radically reviewing its stance regarding Russia’s belligerence. Confronted with the unified global condemnation of Russia’s