Russie.Nei.Visions 2008: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan: Understanding Russia and the New Independent States Paris: Ifri, 2008. - 243 p. (Les études Ifri)
In this year's collection from Ifri's Russia/NIS Center, four themes are explored: the EU-Russia relationship, the strategies of Russia's national champions, Russian foreign policy, and energy and strategy dimensions in Russian bilateral relations. "Any publication on Russia to be released in 2008 is doomed to be a risky business: the ongoing transition from Putin to Medvedev can easily make even the most solid assumptions, hypotheses and conclusions obsolete or irrelevant. But the IFRI compilation is likely to have a long shelf life—the authors dwell on issues and problems that will not fade away with the new President getting to the Kremlin. The volume is a fair and clear reflection of the major challenges that the post-Putin country faces today; it gives plenty of food for thought to anyone interested in the current state and the future of Russian foreign policy in general and its relations with EU in particular."
Andrey Kortunov, President of the New Eurasia Foundation and the ISE-Center (Information. Scholarship. Education), Moscow