Valdai: Russia and the West Köppel reports and reflects

2004

Reporting near Moscow at the Valdai annual meeting, Roger Köppel recounts the club's founding by academics close to Putin and interprets its Western invitations as an effort at rapprochement. He says the meeting will close that Thursday with a Putin address, still prospective in this report. He describes an identity crisis and resentment among some Russian interlocutors and unnamed Valdai founders, attributing their criticism of Western treatment and NATO expansion rather than presenting it as a consensus. Recalling his extensive conversation with Anatol Lieven the previous day, he urges rational discussion, warns of heightened world-war risk while explicitly denying certainty, and advocates a European security architecture including Russia. He values the Wadephul–Lavrov encounter despite criticizing its tone. He says he and Lieven concluded that Putin had also checked himself with the war, contrary to his own earlier assessments, and portrays Ukraine, Russia and Europe as losers and Americans as beneficiaries. In a later return prompted by an Iraq-withdrawal headline, he discusses Lieven and the Quincy Institute's opposition to interventionism, criticizes Western democracy-export campaigns and also faults Russia's hegemonic conduct near its borders. He returns to the New York meeting and urges renewed German–Russian communication. These remain attributed observations and judgments, with no diplomatic agreement or completed Putin address reported.

Köppel recounts the Valdai Club's establishment more than twenty years earlier by academics close to the then-new Russian president Vladimir Putin. He describes invitations to prominent Western academics and politicians and interprets the initiative as an effort to bring Russia closer to the West after the Cold War and Soviet collapse. His account attributes the founding to Putin's circle and his interpretation of its purpose; it does not establish an exact founding day.