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What does Russia think? ? Spanish version

Mark Leonard, ECFR Director, was in Madrid on April 7 to launch the Spanish edition of ECFR's paper "What does Russia think?", co-edited by ECFR and CIDOB.

ECFR's Madrid office organised a media lunch which was attended by the main Spanish dailies (El PAIS, El Mundo, ABC, La Razón, and El Periódico de Cataluña), Spanish Public Radio (RNE) and the Madrid correspondents of the Financial Times and New York Times. Following the lunch, the ECFR Madrid office held a round-table discussion with the main members of the editorial board of ABC, including some of their most relevant foreign affairs commentators and columnists.

During the lunch, Mark Leonard, Jordi Vaquer (director of CIDOB) and José Ignacio Torreblanca (Head of the Madrid Office) emphasised the importance of having a better understanding of Russia's ideas and vision concerning relations with Europe. As What does Russia think? highlights, European leaders too frequently relate to Russia on the basis of inaccurate assumptions that are hardly shared by the Russian elite.

Pic: Launch event of the Spanish verion of What does Russia think?

In Spain, Russia has never been the focus of much attention until recently, when Spain - as a consequence of its economic growth - developed global interests. Following Medvedev's visit to Madrid in March 2009, Spain and Russia signed a "strategic association declaration" reflecting both parties' desire to give bilateral relations a new impetus. Within the EU, Spain aspires to be an honest broker and a positive element in the easing of recent tensions between Russia and the West.

The Spanish version of What does Russia think? is not only interesting to Spaniards, but also the wider Latin American audience, which seldom has access to texts in Spanish reflecting what Russians actually think at a time when Russia and some Latin American countries are witnessing a marked increased in bilateral contacts.

Background to the paper

The EU's Russia policy cannot succeed as long as it continues to rest on faulty analysis and mistaken assumptions.  This is the main conclusion of What does Russia think?, a collection of politically revealing essays by intellectuals whose views influence the Kremlin - many of whom have advised Putin or Medvedev. The collection includes essays by Fyodor Lukyanov, Valery Fadeev, Vyacheslav Glazychev, Gleb Pavlovsky and Leonid Polyakov.

For the full text of the paper in Spanish, see CIDOB's website.

For the full text of the paper in English: http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/ecfr_what_does_russia_think.pdf

More on this...

The latest edition of ECFR español - ECFR's Spanish language podcast - is with Jordi Vaquer, co-editor of the Spanish version of What does Russia think? and Director of CIBOB.

If you want to read about Russia and Europe topics in Spanish related to the Spanish Presidency of the EU please visit the Shadow Presidency Blog.