The Club unites former Sovietologists, that is, leading American and European experts on post-Soviet territory, as well as Russian politicians and analysts.
Before meeting the President [Putin] last Monday a group of fifty foreign experts had been through a real marathon: in the first half of the day they listened to the speeches of Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov, Minister of Communications Yevgeny Reiman, Minister of Oil and Natural Resources Yury Trutnev, and finally three deputy ministers from the government's 'economic' bloc. The experts who had been used to patiently screen bits of information from the former U.S.S.R. and later on from Russia, were literally showered with exclusive and often classified information.
The participants in the second session were very prominent figures, too. It was attended by Marshall Goldman (US), a seasoned expert on Soviet studies, Germany's best known expert on Russia Alexander Rahr, leading foreign policy expert from France Thierry de Montbrial, and Lord Howell, a shadow minister in the British Parliament, to name but a few. In other words, these were the best of the best.
