Valdai Club

The reform of the international monetary system has been a subject of constant debate, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with the dollar-based and US-controlled arrangements that have prevailed since World War II. The United States is very much attached to its privileged and dominant position, and is unwilling to seriously contemplate any changes to it. The rest of the world is increasingly uneasy with the way the US handles its dominance.

This report is the second collective work produced by participants in the Valdai—New Generation1 project, bringing together, in a shared intellectual endeavour, a large cohort of young—yet already accomplished—researchers from Russia, China, India, Brazil, Tajikistan, Italy, Colombia, Turkey, and the Republic of Korea. Over the course of a year, all of them prepared and published original commentaries on the Valdai Club’s website, addressing the most pressing issues in today’s world. They subsequently collaborated, as part of five working groups, in drafting the report’s collective chapters.

This report is the fruit of an intellectual collaboration among a group of young authors from Russia and China, brought together by their shared participation in the Valdai Discussion Club—Next Generation programme in 2024–2025. It seeks to offer the most comprehensive picture of artificial intelligence (AI) as a contemporary international phenomenon—simultaneously pervasive and yet not fully understood.

The military-political conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine represents a pivotal event in the evolution of relations between Russia and neighbouring countries. The trajectory of its impact is not linear: it is determined by changes taking place in the domestic development of all its participants and by shifts in the broader international context. By the time the special military operation had started, the former Soviet Union’s space had transformed profoundly which affected all aspects of politics.

What is the Left? Where is it? Where is it going? Ultimately, what purpose does it serve? This question deserves to be asked in relation to the political forces that claim to represent it, especially since, given the systemic crisis of the liberal system, combined with Western decline, the institutional Left, particularly in Europe, appears to be without prospects, paralyzed, or on its last legs.

The year 2025 was quite a strange period for the Middle East. Depending on who undertakes to describe it, it can be called the year of shuttered hopes or new aspirations, appeasement or wars, triumph and defeat. It was also a year when everything changed, just as it can be argued that nothing changed in 2025.

This paper analyses the dynamics of Russia’s technological cooperation with India. Its aim is to demonstrate how historical cooperation modalities, market structure, institutional and macroeconomic factors, as well as business culture come together to shape present-day constraints and windows of opportunity in Russia-India cooperation, and what this means for Russian companies and the corresponding institutions for supporting businesses in the technology sector.

Today, transport corridors are widely viewed as geopolitical tools. Those who believe this to be the case tend to argue that states, either independently or in groups, develop their logistics infrastructure and create transport corridors to serve their interests while potentially threatening other countries.

The idea of new security architecture in Eurasia is becoming a key concept in Russia’s foreign policy. It was first outlined in the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly in February 2024. Later that year, it was included in the agenda of the Russian President’s summits with the leaders of China and India, discussed by CIS foreign ministers, and further developed within the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

The need to face up to the deficiencies of the Western-controlled monetary and financial system should lead the BRICS to better organize themselves going forward in order to remove at least in part the internal obstacles to change. Although some sensitive matters, such as the possibility of creating a new reserve currency, are only feasible in the longer term, the group should continue to work towards providing practical alternatives not only for themselves but for developing countries as a whole.