Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the days when Cold War allies could count on its largesse, Moscow has embarked on a soft-power campaign of aid to increase its clout and burnish its international image.

According to a poll, three fourths of Georgians are calling for a fence-mending with Russia and want a more peaceful North Caucasus, a prominent Georgian political scientist told a Tbilisi round table on Thursday.

The English outcry at FIFA's decision to award the World Cup to Russia and Qatar has obscured what might be a brilliant gesture of goodwill.

Many observers of the Korean Peninsula have traced the apparent relaxation of tensions there to the supporting contributions made by China and the United States, with attention now focusing on the upcoming inter-Korean dialogue. But Russia's role in this process also deserves mention, since Moscow can be a positive force regarding the Koreas.

In early March, celebrations dedicated to the Russian Maslenitsa Festival, or the Pancake Week, will be held in the city of Rome as part of the Russia-Italy cross-cultural exchange year. The traditional farewell-to-winter carnival will take place under the auspices of the governments of St. Petersburg and Rome.

Evgeny Morozov, a noted specialist on the use of new communications technologies to promote democratic values, has a new book titled "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom." In it, he argues that hype about "Twitter revolutions" and the enormous potential of the Internet to promote open societies and roll back authoritarianism is naive and overblown.

How do you sell a movie called “Captain America” to an overseas market? In South Korea, Russia and the Ukraine, apparently, the answer is you don’t even try... Those involved in the decision are being careful to frame the move as a matter of brand management and consumer awareness and not as a decision tilted by cultural or political winds.

Working at the intersection of policy and science is where I have spent much of my career so a symposium like this is right up my alley. Science diplomacy is critical to the work that lies ahead and this symposium no doubt will generate valuable ideas for moving the nuclear security agenda forward.