Spring 2023 Fletcher Eurasia Club Lunch Seminars, Part 2

By Vishal Manve, alumnus of The Fletcher School

During the second half of the Spring 2023 semester, the Fletcher Eurasia Club organized four lunch seminars with external experts and visiting scholars. 

In a lunch seminar held on March 28, 2023, Maxim Krupsiy and Stanislav Stanskikh, visiting scholars at The Fletcher School, delved into the intricate dynamics of Russian civil society. During the session, they also discussed the surveillance of Russian activists abroad.

On April 11, 2023, Mikhail Krutikhin, co-founder and leading analyst of RusEnergy, joined the lunch seminar series and examined the intersectionality of business and politics of energy relations between Russia, China, and Central Asian countries. He spoke about the historical backdrop of Soviet and Russian oil and gas trade with Europe. Moreover, he shed light on Russia’s potential utilization of energy interdependence with Europe as a geopolitical tool. 

On 18 April 2023, migration law expert Olga Gulina discussed the impact of the Russian-Ukraine war on demographic changes in Russia. “Many countries around the world forecast and model geographical prognosis with political and demographic scenarios,” she stated. She explained how Russia needs people as the war progresses but migrants have been leaving the country, except those hailing from Tajikistan. She further explained how outbound migration has happened in different phases but primarily centered around two major events in Russia—the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the announcement of the partial mobilization in September 2022.

She further said Russia is not a homogenous entity. “There are many Russias and the first one represents a post-industrial economy. This group was well-educated and was the first one that left Russia as the war broke out. Other groups that choose to stay will stay no matter what policy changes happen at the national level.”

Additionally, Gulina mentioned the abysmal asylum rate of 30% that Russians receive abroad, which poses further challenges for outward migration. Many countries like the Netherlands and the Baltic states have a moratorium on their “obligations for asylum applications from Russia”. 

The final session was led by visiting scholar Pavel Luzin and analyst Kamil Galeev, who spoke about Russia’s defense industry and the state of Russia’s economic mobilization in the context of the war in Ukraine.

(Also read: Spring 2023 Fletcher Eurasia Club Lunch Seminars, Part 1)