Valdai International Discussion Club

The Valdai Discussion Club is a Moscow-based think tank and discussion forum. It was established in 2004 and is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place. In 2014, the management of the Club was transferred to the Valdai Club Foundation, established in 2011 by the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, the Russian International Affairs Council, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and the Higher School of Economics. Overview The 2004 Valdai conference was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among many other Russian Government officials attending Valdai meetings are Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister and former President; Sergey Ivanov, former Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office; Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Sergey Shoygu, Minister of Defence. The Club also operates regional programmes – Asian, Mid-Eastern and Euro-Atlantic Dialogues. It holds a special session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and the Eastern Economic Forum. Stanislav Zas, Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization spoke at Valdai in February 2022. Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, described Valdai as "a swanky high-level conference put on by the Russian elite" and "the highest-profile Russian equivalent to Davos (minus the corporate presence)". Drezner also wrote that the chief value to attendees is the ability to determine the official line of the Russian government, although attendance also risks "greater legitimacy on a government that has been accused of some less-than-legitimate activities as of late." Nikolay Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center identified Valdai as "a project used as blatant propaganda by the Kremlin" while Russian sociologist Lilia Shevtsova criticized the Valdai conferences in an article entitled "Putin's Useful Idiots." Marcel H.