This event is online only.
Join us for a meeting of the New York-Russia Public Policy Series, co-hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the New York University Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia.
The devastating war between Israel and Gaza has raised new questions about Russia’s standing in the Middle East. While the Kremlin has been building bridges with both Israel and Palestine, it has become more critical of Israel recently. Has Russia’s strategy changed? Our panel of foreign policy experts will consider what leverage Russia still has in the conflict, how the Kremlin’s evolving stance affects its relationships with the regional powers and the Arab world more broadly, as well as Russia’s calculus in its war against Ukraine. We will also discuss how the West can and should respond to Russia’s Middle Eastern policy.
This event is supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Speakers
Anna Borshchevskaya, Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East
Mark N. Katz, Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University
Hanna Notte, Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and Senior Associate in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)
Hamidreza Azizi, Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin
Moderated by:
Elise Giuliano, Senior Lecturer in Political Science; Director of the MARS-REERS Program; Director of the Program on U.S.-Russia Relations
Joshua Tucker, Director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University
Biographies
Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow in The Washington Institute’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East, focusing on Russia’s policy toward the Middle East. She was previously with the Atlantic Council and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. A former analyst for a U.S. military contractor in Afghanistan, she has also served as communications director at the American Islamic Congress and was a fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy. She is the author of the 2021 book, Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence, and the Washington Institute monograph, Russia in the Middle East. Her analysis has been published in Foreign Affairs, The Hill, The New Criterion, and Middle East Quarterly, as well as peer-reviewed journals. She has conducted translation and analysis for the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office and its flagship publication, Operational Environment Watch. She holds a doctorate from George Mason University.
Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University. He is the author of The Third World in Soviet Military Thought (1982), Russia and Arabia: Soviet Foreign Policy toward the Arabian Peninsula (1986), Gorbachev’s Military Policy in the Third World (1989), Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves (1997), Reflections on Revolutions (1999), and Leaving without Losing: The War on Terror after Iraq and Afghanistan (2012). He has been a visiting scholar first at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki. He also has been a Fulbright Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and the Sir William Luce Fellow at Durham University in the U.K. In 2019, he was appointed a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He earned a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hanna Notte is the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and a Senior Associate in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. Her current work focuses on Russia’s foreign, arms control and nonproliferation policies, Russia’s relations with the “Global South”, Russian military innovation, and arms control and nonproliferation in the Middle East. She regularly writes for journals and outlets such as The Nonproliferation Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and War on the Rocks, among others. She is a co-author of Death Dust: The Rise, Demise, and Future of Radiological Weapons Programs, forthcoming with Stanford University Press (2023). Previously, Dr. Notte worked with The Shaikh Group, an NGO focused on informal diplomacy in Middle East conflicts, supporting its engagement with Russia. She was a visiting researcher in 2015–16 with the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Carnegie Moscow Center. She holds a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University.
Hamidreza Azizi is a Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. He was an Assistant Professor of Regional Studies at Shahid Beheshti University (2016-2020) and a guest lecturer at the Department of Regional Studies at the University of Tehran (2016-2018). His research interests include security and geopolitical issues in the Middle East and Central Eurasia, Iran’s foreign policy, and Iran-Russia relations. His analysis has appeared in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, and other publications, as well as in Iranian Studies, the Journal of Contemporary China, and other peer-reviewed journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Regional Studies from the University of Tehran.
