Please join us for an off-the-record discussion by Swedish diplomat and policy analyst Carl Hvenmark Nilsson. Upcoming elections in Germany, France, the Netherlands and other European countries will potentially galvanize a new EU policy toward Russia. Will 2017 be the year of a European rapprochement with the Kremlin and the end of sanctions? How will intra-European dynamics affect diplomatic efforts over Ukraine and Syria, NPT coordination and coordinating overflights across the Baltic Sea? More broadly, what would all this mean in terms of potentially thawing the deeply chilled relationship between Russia and the West? (Credit: AP Photo: Markus Schreiber)
Required: RSVP to RussiaMatters@hks.harvard.edu by 5 p.m. on Friday, March 10, and Harvard ID to enter. Please note that this seminar will be strictly off the record.
Carl Hvenmark is a leading EU policy expert and until recently a visiting fellow with the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. He will return to government service later this year; until then, he provides strategic advice to both private and government actors in Sweden on sanctions policy. His primary research interests are European foreign policy, Nordic-Baltic military affairs and EU-Russia relations. Mr. Hvenmark has published widely on U.S. and European foreign/security policy and transatlantic relations, and has regularly provided commentary to the media. Prior to his time at CSIS, he worked on public diplomacy issues relating to Ukraine and strategic implications of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm and on transatlantic policies at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Americas Department. Mr. Hvenmark also brings experience from the Swedish Armed Forces, where he served as a combat medic and achieved the rank of sergeant. In addition, he has spent several years as a field worker in conflict zones, collecting data on internal displacement and asymmetric violence.
Simon Saradzhyan is the founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Mr. Saradzhyan also helps advance the center’s U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism. His research interests include international arms control, counterterrorism and the foreign, defense and security policies of Russia and other post-Soviet states and their relations with great powers. Prior to joining the Belfer Center in 2008 as a full-time research fellow, Mr. Saradzhyan had worked as a researcher, consultant and journalist in Russia for 15 years.
