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Jonathan Paris, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, appeared on France 24 to discuss Russia's support for the Assad regime and what it means for a possible UN resolution against Syria.
Damon Wilson US Senate Testimony: Ukraine at a Crossroads
On February 1, Atlantic Council executive vice president Damon Wilson testified at a hearing of the US Senate Committe on Foreign Relations on the topic: "Ukraine at a Crossroads: What's at Stake for the US and Europe?"
Michele Dunne on US-Egypt Relations for NPR's Morning Edition
Relations between the US and Egypt have taken a downturn since Egyptian authorities raided the offices of seventeen nongovernmental organizations in December - three of them US-funded. Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, spoke on NPR's Morning Edition about the situation and what it means for US aid to Egypt.
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The South Asia Center receives guidance and support from many experts throughout the world. Our senior fellows, guest-speakers, Center patrons, and visitors contribute heavily to the Center’s mission to “wage peace,” and engage the international community in the region. The Center asked our contributors the simple, but key question, “What you do expect in 2012?”
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Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II Dies
James Joyner | December 06, 2008Russia's top religious leader has died.
Reporting from Moscow -- Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, the iconic religious leader who restored the church from a post-Soviet shell to an institution of privilege and power, died at his Moscow home Friday. He was 79.
The imposing, white-bearded Alexei had reigned in the Russian Orthodox Church's top seat for the last 18 years, an era that witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rebirth of Russia as a powerful, centralized state under the steely leadership of Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin.
Alexei was celebrated for healing a painful rift with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, a splinter faction established by White Guard Russians who fled the Soviet Union for the West. The Russian patriarch signed a pact with Metropolitan Laurus last year, putting an end to the bitter, 80-year schism.
Alexei had been a fervent supporter of Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, whose public observance of Orthodox rites helped restore the church's image in Russian popular culture. Under the dual reigns of Putin and Alexei, Russia moved back toward its former imperial system of a powerful, centralized authority supported by -- and supporting -- a national church.
RIA Novosti reports on the search for a successor.
The governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church began a meeting on Saturday to choose an interim leader, following the death of Patriarch Alexy II. The meeting between the seven permanent and five non-permanent bishops of the Holy Synod is taking place at the patriarch's residence in Peredelkino, outside Moscow.
[...]
A senior church official said earlier that heart failure was believed to be the cause of death. The patriarch was known to have suffered from health problems in recent years.
Alexy II became patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990, shortly before the collapse of the atheist Soviet Union, and presided over a religious revival in Russia, with thousands of churches and monasteries being restored and hundreds of new ones built across the country.
