On April 6, Under Secretary Tara Sonenshine welcomed Special Presidential Representative Mikhail Shvydkoy at the State Department to discuss future plans for collaboration in the areas of education, media, sports and professional exchanges.

BRICS, grouping Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has set a distinctive example of great powers rising with "soft power," said Boris Martynov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Latin America Institute.

WASHINGTON --- Tara Sonenshine, nominated to serve as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, offered advice this morning to public diplomacy observers: Watch China.

“We are challenged every day by what the Chinese are doing in public diplomacy,” she said.

India is taking steps to expand links with Russian universities in an effort to reach out to this country’s younger generation... last week India’s Ambassador to Russia Ajai Malhotra signed an agreement on establishing a Centre of Indian Studies at the Kazan Federal University that will be headed by an Indian professor.

After decades of being banned by the Kremlin and decried for "distorting the human body", Henry Moore's abstracts, once called degenerate here, are now on display inside the very stronghold of power...We all know this exhibition is not just about art, but about diplomacy.

Putin perceives Russia as being the target of constant and mostly unfriendly pressure – from military challenges such as NATO enlargement to the imposition of social changes through media campaigns and other “soft power” elements...Success is only possible if based on use of power and this must be real 'hard' power.

Reexamine the strategy of “reset” with Russia. The President should commission the National Security Council to form a task force for a bottom-up review of Russia policy in view of Putin’s return to the Kremlin and Moscow’s sabotage of the U.S. policies on Iran and Syria. The U.S. should use its public diplomacy assets to “name and shame” Russia as an enabler of the Iranian and Syrian regimes.