On January 13, 1993, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction was signed (also known as Chemical Weapons Convention, CWC). According to Art. I, States Parties are obliged not to develop, produce, or use chemical weapons, not to carry out military preparations for their use; to destroy all chemical weapons in their possession or abandoned by them on the territory of another State Party; destroy any facilities producing such weapons, and not use riot control chemicals as a weapon of war.

On December 23, 2021, the expert seminar on the topic “30 Years of Russian Nuclear Succession” was held by PIR Center under the “Nuclear Nonproliferation & Russia” program. Experts from the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the United States, including direct participants in the events, took the floor during the seminar.

Since 2007, Albert Zulkharneev's career was intertwined with PIR Center. Here he went through all the steps of the career ladder – from intern and educational projects coordinator to director in 2015–2019. In 2019, Albert Zulkharneev went to work at the All-Russian Popular Front, where he was engaged in social projects. At the same time, Albert, as a true PIRovets, has not lost his strong connection with our team and, until November 2021, continued to contribute to PIR Center activities as Advisor to Director and PIR Center Advisory Board Member.

On December 20, as part of the Dual Degree M.A. Program Global Security, Nuclear Policy and WMD Nonproliferation (developed by MGIMO University, Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, MIIS, USA, and PIR Center) PIR Center had the honor of having Ms. Izumi Nakamitsu, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, deliver a public lecture. The event was held under the auspices of the PIR Center’s NONPROLIFERATION.WORLD online platform, which is intended to entail a common scientific, educational, and communication portal for current and future generations of international security experts.

The X NPT Review Conference (January 4-28, 2022) promises to be difficult: the degree of polarization on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament issues is off the scale. In these conditions, a detailed analysis of the positions of various interstate "coalitions" participating in the review process is, particularly in demand. The task set by the authors is not limited to an abstract presentation of the history of the creation, composition or position of a particular coalition. It is important to understand to what extent this or that grouping can contribute to the convergence of the positions of the NWS and the NNWS. Does she enjoy sufficient authority? How well-established are the processes of coordinating positions within a particular grouping? Can it become a reliable dialogue partner in the run-up to the RevCon 2022, or, as sometimes happens with some regional associations, will it repeat once agreed theses over and over again. And most importantly, to what extent does cooperation with this or that coalition meet Russia's interests?

The study was implemented within the framework of the project "The Future of the NPT & Russia’s Interests", carried out since 1994.

In the interview with Jamie Kwong, the Stanton Pre-Doctoral Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we talked about the P5 Process prospects, non-nuclear-weapon states position, the future of U.S. chair from the U.S. side.

This research paper comes out a few days after the publication by Russia of draft treaties with the United States and NATO countries on "security guarantees". The paper contains the results of the round table of PIR Center within the framework of the 13th Russian International Studies Association (RISA) Convention in 2021, where experts discussed elements of the "strategic equation" that would allow creating a new mutually acceptable system of arms control against the background of technological progress, the increasing confrontation of large states and the general crisis of the global architecture of international security. Thus, this paper presents abstracts from the speeches of PIR Center Director Vladimir Orlov, the head of the Division for military and strategic problems of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control of the Russian MFA Alexander Trofimov, Chief Research Associate at Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) Vladimir Dvorkin, PIR Center consultant Andrey Baklitskiy, PIR Center Junior Research Fellow Sergey Semenov, Senior Research Fellow at Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, RAS, Oleg Krivolapov and Associate Professor of the Department of International and National Security of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian MFA Andrey Malov.

On December 20, 2021, 6^th cohort students of the International Dual Degree M.A. Program Global Security, Nuclear Policy, and WMD Nonproliferation (developed by MGIMO University, PIR Center and Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, USA) and PIR Center junior research fellows met with H.E. Sergei Kislyak, First Deputy Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, to discuss the future of the Russian-US relations.

In the interview with Tariq Rauf, PIR Center Advisory Board member, the Director of SIPRI’s Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation Programme, we talked about the outcomes of the second session of the WMD free zone, Iran’s position and prospects for RevCon 2022.