In the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, the Yale Russian Chorus came to Moscow to break the ice between the Soviet Union and the United States. Fast forward 50 years and Americans and Russians are once again using music to defrost the chill between their two countries.

In an Annie Hall moment at Foreign Policy, the inventor of the term “soft power” explains the shortcomings of Chinese and Russian efforts to cultivate it. “China and Russia make the mistake of thinking that government is the main instrument of soft power. In today’s world, information is not scarce but attention is, and attention depends on credibility.”

The mentor’s tone of the United States is standing in the way of the further development of Russian-U.S. relations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. “The present difficulties in relations stem from a number of unfriendly steps taken by the American side that provoked a furious response in Russian society,” he said at a session of the Russian Public Council for International Cooperation and Popular Diplomacy on Thursday.

Russia declared an Estonian diplomat persona non grata two weeks after the Baltic nation’s prime minister visited the country for the first time. Franek Persidski, Estonia’s consul general in Russia’s second-biggest city of St. Petersburg, has returned home, Minna- Liina Lind, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said today in an e-mailed response to questions.

Almost 315 years after Russian Czar Peter the Great’s first visit to Holland, six Russian students and six of their Dutch counterparts are tenaciously working on a joint cultural project dedicated to the bilateral year between the two countries.

U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine rejected the idea that relations between the U.S and Russia are deteriorating and said social networking should be used to forge better ties during her visit to Moscow.

U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine rejected the idea that relations between the U.S and Russia are deteriorating and said social networking should be used to forge better ties during her visit to Moscow.