In 2006, executives from the public relations firm Ketchum flew to Moscow to secure an account that has since been worth tens of millions of dollars. President Vladimir Putin of Russia had hired Ketchum to provide advice on public relations before the nation hosted the Group of 8 meeting in St. Petersburg. At the time, Mr. Putin "cared a great deal about what other leaders, especially presidents, thought about him," said Michael A. McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Russia who now teaches at Stanford.

China's president, Xi Jinping, has paid visits to Russia, South Korea and Mongolia since February this year, visits that have "hit pressure points" that "cut right to the chase," according to Duowei News, an overseas Chinese news outlet. Zhang Jiuhuan, vice chair of the China Public Diplomacy Association, compared Xi's recent official foreign visits to hitting pressure points, or points on the energy channels of the body — in other words, they were "short, fast, rich in content and fruitful." 

Russian officials have responded to a mocking tweet from Canadian delegates over the escalating Ukraine crisis. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been in the spotlight since Canadian officials posted a snarky map to help Russian soldiers who keep “getting lost in Ukraine”. Moscow officials have hit back with their own map, with the disputed Crimea region clearly marked as Russian territory.

With its image battered by the conflict in Ukraine, Russia is accelerating its push to rebuild, modernize and expand its Soviet-era foreign media apparatus. One country of focus is Germany, the European economic powerhouse that has both close ties to Russia and rising public resentment of the U.S. 

Dear Iranian Negotiators: Some of you may remember me from the time I served on the American delegation to the nuclear talks.  Although I left the U.S. Government over a year ago, I try to follow the negotiations closely, and I have been impressed by the determination and professionalism that you – as well as the Americans and indeed all the parties – have brought to the table.

For about three hours Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian flag was flying high over Russia’s capital city. Protesters fastened a blue-and-yellow banner to the Soviet star atop the spire of one of Moscow’s Stalin-era “Seven Sisters” skyscrapers on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment about a mile from the Kremlin.

Ten years ago, Robert Kagan famously compared the relationship between the EU and the US to the one between Venus and Mars. Brussels would be the amicable face of the couple wielding its normative influence and soft power potential, in contrast with Washington's aggressive foreign policy. Recent developments, however, have shown that the EU might be giving up its soft politics for a more bellicose stance, at least on Russia.

Lorries from a Russian convoy carrying aid to eastern Ukraine have reached a border post controlled by separatists. But they seem unlikely to cross into Ukraine immediately as the Red Cross said it had still not received security guarantees for the convoy to continue. Earlier Ukraine's military said that separatists had shot down a government fighter jet near the rebel-held city of Luhansk in the east of the country.