Eyes were trained on Russia for the last month as the country hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup, but the spotlight followed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Helsinki as he met with US President Donald Trump in the pair’s first official bilateral summit. Many analysts were apprehensive about the tournament given Russia’s strained relations with many Cup-qualifying countries, and expectations for the Helsinki Summit were mixed given the ongoing investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, the suspicious nerve-agent poisoning of Russian double spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and two unrelated civilians in the United Kingdom, and ongoing disagreements about Crimea and Syria. In this RPI Policy Alert, the Rising Powers offer their reviews of Russia’s performance as host to the World Cup and negotiator in Norway. Read more here.
