Soft power – broadly a country’s ability to persuade other nations to cooperate without recourse to force – has long been a tool of Western foreign policy,  but in recent years Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has introduced his own much less benign variant of the initiative. 

Surprisingly, some of these leaders, particularly in Russia and China, have been wielding a sophisticated and deceptive soft power beyond their borders that is proving more enduring and effective than in the past. Their tactics are asymmetrical and subversive, using deception and disinformation, not easily confronted.

Why, then, did the tsar’s forces weaken their own diplomatic case by taking away hundreds of Russian monastics? The best guess is that the entire monastic peninsula was on the verge of veering out of control because of the theological dispute which had been gathering pace for several years...

On 16 May 2016 Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern district, Yury Trutnev, met with officials from Japanese and Russian energy and metallurgical companies. The meeting followed a summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss enhancing bilateral ties. [...] Public diplomacy is also another area of great potential between the two countries.