Podcast host Alexander Gabuev is joined by Yevgeny Preigerman, founder and director of the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations; Nataliya Vasilyeva, Moscow correspondent for The Telegraph; and Oksana Antonenko, director of the Global Political Risk team at the UK-based Control Risk consultancy and a member of the EU-Russia Expert Network on Foreign Policy (EUREN). They discuss the violent crackdown on protests in Belarus and its consequences, Lukashenko’s long-term prospects, whether the opposition can possibly win, the role of Russia and the West in the ongoing protests, and more.

The coronavirus pandemic has only intensified the rivalry between the United States and China, hastening the advent of a new era of bipolarity. How can Russia maintain equilibrium and avoid being drawn into the U.S.-China confrontation as a junior partner of China? Will the collapse of oil prices and subsequent loss of revenue force Russia to rein in its ambitious foreign policy of recent years? Are there renewed hopes for progress in the Donbas peace talks? And will the Kremlin finally be forced to turn its focus to domestic affairs? Carnegie Moscow Center director Dmitri Trenin and Elena Chernenko, a special correspondent at the Kommersant publishing house, join podcast host Alexander Gabuev to discuss these issues and more.

China deployed an array of digital surveillance tools as part of its response to the coronavirus outbreak. Russia is trying to use similar technology but with mixed results. The rapid embrace of such tools is sparking an international debate about the impact on privacy and the need for protections and oversight. In this episode of the Carnegie Moscow Center podcast, Alex Gabuev discusses how digital surveillance tools and facial recognition technologies are being used in the post-Soviet space in the age of COVID-19 with China watcher Leonid Kovachich; Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program; and Steven Feldstein, a nonresident fellow in the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.

Russia-China relations get a lot of coverage in Moscow, but what’s the view from Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East? Carnegie’s Alex Gabuev talks to Ivan Zuenko, an expert on the Sino-Russian relationship, about the real scale of the Chinese presence in Russia’s Far East, attitudes among both Chinese and Russian people to one another, the Belt and Road initiative, and more.

This is a joint episode with Evan Feigenbaum's China Local/Global podcast: https://soundcloud.com/carnegie-audio/asia-localglobal-ivan-zuenko

Could Coronavirus actually be a boost for the Chinese government? Is it better to be spied on by China or the United States? Is Russia really serious about its pivot to Asia? Carnegie’s Alex Gabuev and The Financial Times’ Asia editor Jamil Anderlini discuss the impact of Coronavirus on the Russian economy, how the virus is influencing the ongoing US-China trade war, and how events in Asia affect the choices European countries are making.