Paul Stronski is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Paul Stronski was a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, where his research focuses on the relationship between Russia and neighboring countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Until January 2015, Stronski served as a senior analyst for Russian domestic politics in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He was director for Russia and Central Asia on the U.S. National Security Council Staff from 2012 to 2014, where he supported the president, the national security advisor, and other senior U.S. officials on the development and coordination of policy toward Russia. Before that, he worked as a State Department analyst on Russia from 2011 to 2012, and on Armenia and Azerbaijan from 2007 to 2010. A former career U.S. foreign service officer, Stronski served in Hong Kong from 2005 to 2007.
Stronski has taught history and post-Soviet affairs at Stanford, George Mason, and George Washington universities. Prior to his government service, he worked on a USAID-sponsored technical assistance project for the healthcare sector in Central Asia.
He is the author of Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), which won the 2011 Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award for History and the Humanities. Since the mid-1990s, he has undertaken extensive research and work experience in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Armenia.
The war in Ukraine has not stopped Russia’s activities in Africa. Over the past year, the Wagner Group, in particular, has taken advantage of France’s and other Western countries’ worsening relations with Sahelian states.
Russia has proven that it knows how to be a master of distraction and how to take advantage of ethnic cleavages, bolster hardline nationalist politicians, and complicate the region’s lagging reform agendas.
The leaders of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan met in the ancient Silk Route city of Samarkand on September 16 for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
NPR's A Martinez talks to Paul Stronski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about how Russia's war with Ukraine is reshaping the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
One year ago, Tunisian President Kais Saied’s self-coup put the country’s democratic transition in jeopardy. Carnegie experts examine the key aspects of Tunisia’s stalled transition through a comparative lens, both with other countries’ transitions and Tunisia’s own sectoral changes over time.
Ukraine traditionally was closely integrated in the Soviet economy, and then the Russian economy. The military and industrial complex of the two countries were highly integrated until just the last decade.
After strong initial support, Sputnik V’s reception in Mexico has cooled amid growing public relations problems. For now, Russia’s ability to use vaccine diplomacy to boost its soft power and economic ties with Mexico has faltered.
If Russia wants to be influential on the continent, African political and economic leaders should demand more of Moscow, not simply settle for the symbolic diplomatic engagements or agreements at which the Russian leadership excels.
With Russia unable to act as key mediator, the countries are looking elsewhere for help.
The region is dependent on Russia but wary of endorsing Moscow’s actions.
