Russian authorities on Tuesday expelled an American they accused of being a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officer operating under diplomatic cover in Moscow, alleging that he attempted to recruit a member of the Russian intelligence services involved in antiterrorism work.

For many Russians, the notion of soft power was once something of an oxymoron, like icy fire. Yet, watching the success of the US and the EU in getting others to want what the Americans and Europeans have to offer, they changed their minds and even sought to imitate their competitors' performance. Now, enhancing Russia's soft power is one of the tasks the Kremlin has given to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition, a special agency for international cooperation has been created with the specific mission of reaching that goal.

In the same week as China announced a peace plan for the Arab-Israeli conflict and Russia and the United States announced agreement to hold an international conference to try and resolve the Syrian conflict peacefully, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he would return to the region later this month to try and re-start Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Israeli government announced plans to build 300 new settler homes in the Beit-El colony near Ramallah.

Russian is the sixth largest edition of the online encyclopedia (measured by number of content pages, excluding redirects etc), outdone only by Western European languages. In terms of traffic, Russian is now the third most accessed (measured in views per hour), only the English and Spanish sites are busier. In both cases, Russian has outpaced world languages like Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, and Portuguese. In Russia, wikipedia.org is the 9th most visited domain, and the site gets similar traffic levels from former Soviet states where Russian remains a lingua franca.

On the face of it, the Browder vs. Russia match is uneven: One Man Against the Kremlin is almost a comic book title. In fact, it leveled out last December when the U.S. Congress, after heavy lobbying by Mr. Browder, adopted the so-called Magnitsky list, which imposes sanctions on 18 Russian officials alleged to have been complicit in the lawyer’s mistreatment.

The two major powers' joint announcement that they would try to bring together representatives of President Bashar al-Assad's government and the rebel forces fighting to oust him represents their first serious diplomatic initiative in nearly a year. After lengthy talks in Moscow on Tuesday, the United States and Russia said they would try to breathe life into a carefully negotiated agreement they both endorsed in June 2012 that left open the question of whether or not Assad must leave power.

From 22 to 30 March, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid state visits to Russia, Tanzania, South Africa and the Republic of Congo, and attended the Fifth BRICS Leaders' Meeting. On the way back, Foreign Minister Wang Yi briefed the accompanying journalists about the president's visit.

This renewed effort starts with Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to Moscow this coming week for talks with leaders in Russia, the Syrian government's most powerful international friend.