On October 18–21, 2021, Sochi hosts the 18th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Global Shake-Up in the 21st Century: The Individual, Values, and the State”. Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, gave the opening speech. The topic of the first session, which took place on October 18, 2021 and was open to a wide audience, was “Substitute for a World War or a Prelude to It?”. Celso Amorim, Foreign Minister of Brazil (2003-2010); Defense Minister of Brazil (2011-2014) (Brazil); Tsogtbaatar Damdin, Member of the Parliament of Mongolia; Head of Mongolian Delegation, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (Mongolia); Thomas Graham, Distinguished Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (USA); Oksana Sinyavskaya, Deputy Director, Institute for Social Policy, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE); Zhou Bo, Senior Fellow, Centre for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University; Expert, China Forum (China). The session was moderated by Andrey Sushentsov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club; Director, Institute of International Studies, MGIMO University.