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A visiting session of the Valdai Discussion Club will be held in Yerevan, Armenia on March 11 to bring together experts of the Club and members of the Armenian academia.

As the Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club Andrey Bystritskiy told Ria Novosti Agency, “the visiting session will be focused on debates on the developments in Eurasia in the context of challenges originating from the Greater Middle East, their impact on South Caucasus, and the challenges of modernity in general.”

The Valdai Discussion Club official release says the Middle East has become a place where interests of the major world powers collide. What will happen in the region and how its contradictions will be resolved will impact developments in many parts of the world, but the Middle East’s thunder will echo in Greater Eurasia before anywhere else.

Today, Greater Eurasia is being shaped as a new global centre of influence and development. Russia, as part of its turn to the East, is cooperating with partners to enhance the Eurasian Economic Union, while China is making its turn to the West, focusing on the Europe-bound transportation and infrastructural corridors. The Greater Europe project, envisaging an endless expansion of Europe with Brussels as its centre is, in fact, discontinued. All of this requires rethinking: rejection of some old stereotypes and formulation of qualitatively different approaches to interaction on this vast space.

According to the source, participants in the session include: Vache Gabrielyan, Armenian Vice Premier, Minister of International Economic Integration and Reform, Vigen Sargsyan, Armenian Defense Minister, Aleksandr Khachaturyan, Aide to the Prime Minister of Armenia, Executive Director of the Centre of Strategic Initiatives, Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, Fyodor Lukyanov, Academic Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, Vitaly Naumkin, President of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Anatoly Torkunov, Rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MGIMO-University), Nikolai Zlobin, President of the Washington-based Center on Global Interests, Alexander Rahr, Research Director of the German-Russian Forum, Yaroslav Lissovolik, Chief Economist with the Eurasian Development Bank, Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, and others.