Carnegie Politika Podcast

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Nate Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Russia Eurasia Program, to discuss how Russia is raising the stakes in its attempts to stop Europe from helping Ukraine.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Farida Rustamova, author of the Vlast newsletter dedicated to Russia’s domestic politics, to discuss the 2026 State Duma elections, what’s new, and what to expect next.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Hiski Haukkala, director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and former chief of cabinet to the Finnish president, to discuss the growing Russia threat to Northern Europe, Finland's unique way of managing the Russia problem, and potential ways to build a more stable and predictable relationship between Europe and the Kremlin.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Eva Seiwert, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, to discuss the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek and how member states use the organization to pursue their policy objectives.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Janis Kluge, deputy head of the Eastern Europe and Eurasia research team at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, to discuss the Russian military recruitment machine, a possible new mobilization wave, and the state of the Kremlin’s war chest.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Nate Reynolds, a senior fellow at Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, to discuss transatlantic security and its future after the recent NATO summit in Ankara.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Tatiana Mitrova, a global fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, to discuss how the latest series of drone attacks and the Middle East conflict have affected the Russian energy industry, and whether they amount to a lethal blow to Putin’s war chest.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Thomas De Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, and Mikayel Zolyan, an independent researcher and ex-deputy in the Armenian parliament, to discuss the significance of the recent Armenian elections.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Eugene Rumer, a senior fellow and director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia program, to discuss how Russia perceives its evolving strategic environment in the fifth year of its war against Ukraine, and what security dilemmas the Kremlin faces as a result of its own actions.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Yanmei Xie, a senior associate fellow at Mercator Insitute for China Studies (MERICS), to discuss Putin’s visit to Beijing, how China is navigating its relationship with Russia, and why there is still no deal on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline.

Podcast host Alexander Gabuev is joined by Carolina Drüten, security correspondent for Die Welt, and Joseph Verbovszky, co-director of the German Wargaming Center, to discuss the first public wargame in Germany that lays bare how Russia could potentially attack NATO territory and how the alliance may react.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Balázs Jarábik, author of the Essential Ukraine newsletter and founder of Minority Report Consulting, and Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, to discuss the changing tides in Europe after Viktor Orban’s defeat in Hungary and Rumen Radev’s win in Bulgaria and what they mean for Russia, Ukraine, and the EU.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Rose Gottemoeller, a lecturer at Stanford University, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, and author of the forthcoming book Security Through Cooperation: Space, Nuclear Weapons, and US-Russia Relations After the Cold War, to discuss the prospects of strategic arms control between the United States and Russia.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Temur Umarov, a fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, to discuss how the countries of Central Asia are being affected by the war in neighboring Iran and how they are navigating broader global and regional disruption.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by his colleagues Nicole Grajewski, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie Endowment and the author of Russia and Iran: Partners in Defiance from Syria to Ukraine, and Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and a leading expert on the Russian energy sector, to discuss the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran and how it affects Russian political influence in the region and its position on the global energy market.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by his colleague Zaur Shiriyev, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and Philip Gamaghelyan, an associate professor at the University of San Diego, to discuss the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan and its implications for the South Caucasus.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by his colleague Alexandra Prokopenko, a leading expert on the Russian economy, to discuss its state ahead of the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and what looks set to happen this year.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, to talk about the World Economic Forum in Davos and the European strategic discussion on the war in Ukraine and managing a rogue Russia.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by his colleague Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, to discuss how the latest U.S. intervention in Venezuela and control of its oil will affect Russia and its reputation as a patron saint for other regimes aligning themselves against the United States.

Following Vladimir Putin’s state visit to India, podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Pankaj Saran, former Indian ambassador to Moscow and convenor at NatStrat, to discuss India’s position amid China’s growing influence, U.S. tariffs, and Russian aggression.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Ekaterina Schulmann, a non-resident senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the German ambassador to Russia, at the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum to discuss the last thirty years of Russian history and how freedom turned into dictatorship and war.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Elizaveta Fokht, a BBC Russian Service special correspondent, to discuss how Russia tried and failed to win over Trump.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Edward Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, to discuss the new U.S. sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest crude producers.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Robert Zoellick, formerly a president of the World Bank, U.S. trade representative, and U.S. deputy secretary of state, to discuss initiatives to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine, along with the associated legal hurdles.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Justyna Gotkowska, deputy director of the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, to discuss the latest Russia-related incidents over Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Poland, and what they mean for NATO.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and leading expert on Russia’s energy sector, to discuss the state of the Russian oil and gas sector, which remains a crucial source of revenue for Putin’s war machine.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Sergey Radchenko, historian and professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of the book To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, to discuss the history of Russia-China relations and their current state.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by his colleague, Artyom Shraibman, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and one of the most prominent experts on Belarus, to discuss Belarus’ key role in European security.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Farida Rustamova and Margarita Liutova, independent journalists and authors of the Faridaily English-language newsletter, to discuss the shocking suicide of Russia’s transport minister, Roman Starovoit, and what it tells us about the pressure inside Putin’s power system.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Nathaniel Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Program who worked in senior Russia policy roles during Joe Biden’s presidency, to discuss the recent NATO summit in The Hague and the implications for Ukraine, Russia, and Europe.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Nicole Grajewski, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Arkady Mil-Man, a senior researcher and head of the Russia Program at the Institute for National Security Studies, as well as a former Israeli ambassador to Russia, to discuss the fate of Russian influence in the Middle East amid the Israel-Iran conflict.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and one of the leading experts on the Russian economy, to assess the current state of Putin’s wartime economy and discuss its future prospects.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by two representatives of the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona—English-language editor Mika Golubovsky and data team technical lead David Frenkel—to discuss their work counting Russia’s losses in spite of Moscow’s attempts to obscure that data.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Arkady Ostrovsky, Russia and Eastern Europe editor for The Economist, to discuss the role of Victory Day in Russia and how it has evolved under Putin.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and one of the most sought-after analysts of the battlefield dynamics in Ukraine, to discuss the situation on the ground and the trajectory of the war.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Tatiana Mikhailova, an economist and visiting assistant professor at Penn State University, to make sense of the trade war initiated by Washington.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Balazs Jarabik, an alumnus of the Carnegie Endowment and former head of the political analysis and coordination department at the EU’s advisory mission to Ukraine, to discuss the situation inside the war-torn country as the U.S. embarks on separate talks with Russia and Ukraine.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Yanmei Xie, an independent researcher, and David Rennie, the geopolitics editor at The Economist, to discuss the theory behind the recent pivot in U.S. foreign policy toward Russia.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Felicia Schwartz, defense and foreign policy correspondent for the Financial Times, and Eric Green, a senior non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, to discuss the sudden pivot in U.S. foreign policy and the latest developments in U.S.-Russia talks and the war in Ukraine.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Sophia Besch, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, to discuss Europe’s role in supporting Ukraine, German defense policy, and the future of Germany’s relationship with Russia amid the upcoming Bundestag elections.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Eric Ciaramella, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia program, to discuss potential peace talks on Ukraine and what it would take to reach a deal.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Sergey Vakulenko, a prominent expert on Russia’s shadow fleet, oil trade, and sanctions evasion, and a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center; and Tatiana Mitrova, another sought after expert on the energy market, Russian oil and transportation, and a research fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, to discuss Russia's energy sector, sanctions, global trade and more.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Nicole Grajewski, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Hanna Notte, director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center, to unpack the sudden fall of Assad’s regime and what it means for Russia to lose its stronghold in the Middle East.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, the strike on Dnipro using the experimental Oreshnik missile, and the possibility of new strategic arms agreements between Russia and the US.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Alexander Baunov, editor-in-chief of Carnegie Politika and a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, to discuss the upcoming Trump presidency and what effect it may have on Russian foreign policy and the war in Ukraine.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Maksim Samorukov, a fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and by Paula Erizanu, a prominent writer and journalist from Chisinau who writes for Financial Times, The Guardian and The New York Times, to discuss the upcoming presidential election in Moldova and what leverage Moscow still has to interfere in Moldova’s path toward the EU.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, and by Alexander Kolyandr, a financial analyst and non-resident senior scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis, to discuss the state budget for 2025/26 and the prospects of the Russian economy in coming years.

Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, and independent researcher Alexey Gusev to discuss the unprecedented turn of events at the frontline following Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region.

Carnegie Politika podcast host Alexander Gabuev is joined by prominent historian Mary Elise Sarotte to discuss the past, present and future of NATO and European security amid the war in Ukraine.

Carnegie Politika podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by Carnegie Europe's director Rosa Balfour and senior fellow Tom de Waal to discuss Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, and Serbia, which find themselves caught between Russia and the EU.