Iran and Argentina have applied to join the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) mechanism days after a summit of the five-nation bloc during which the leaders agreed to continue to discuss the possibility of admitting new countries to the grouping on the basis of "full consultation and consensus."

On June 25, at 20:00 in Zvenigorod (Moscow region), as part of the Maslin Fest, the PIR Community is holding the First Charity Auction in support of the PIR Center Education & Training Program. Among the lots on display: unique materials from the 1990s, bibliographic and research rarities from our storerooms, books and magazines with autographs of the authors. To participate in the auction, it is enough to register for the Maslin Fest.

On June 22, 2022, the XXI International School on Global Security for young professionals from Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was visited by Sergei Ryabkov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. He noticed the fundamental theses of the Russian foreign policy doctrine and assessed the current situation of the Russian Federation on the world stage and prospects for the development of relations with partners.

In an Vladimir Orlov's interview, director of PIR Center, with Jorge Ferrer, a journalist of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the issues of the risks of using nuclear weapons against the background of the Ukrainian conflict are touched upon. We also talked about how the Chekhov's gun differs from nuclear weapons, whether Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, whether European children can sleep peacefully now, American or Russian nuclear weapons pose a great danger to global security, whether there is reason for optimism today and which race will replace the current unwise human race.

On June 19, the official opening of the XXI International School on Global Security took place. The director of PIR Center Vladimir Orlov and the coordinator of Education & Training Program of the PIR Center Elena Karnaukhova addressed the students of the School with a welcoming speech. He stressed the importance of holding face-to-face scientific and educational events and suggested to forget about "zooms" for a while, and tune in to active, live communication. The participants of the School will have an exciting 9 days full of discussions on pressing issues of global security.

PIR Center and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) held an online seminar "Danger of nuclear war and strategic (in)stability: is de-escalation feasible?" in a Track II format. Participants from Russia and the United States discussed the state of Russian-American strategic relations in three areas: risks of nuclear escalation, destabilizing weapons, and dangers of militarization of the Russia-NATO contact line. Experts from France and Switzerland were also present.

On June 18-26, 2022, in Zvenigorod, Moscow region, XXI PIR Center International School on Global Security for Young Professionals from Europe and CIS countries will take place. According to the established tradition, as part of the closing ceremony, a meeting of PIR Alumni Community will be held. We will be glad to see our colleagues, friends and partners, all those who inspire us to new achievements and projects!

The Shangri-La Dialogue was held in Singapore on June 10-12 for the first time after a two-year break and has become a significant event in international politics. This Asian Security Forum is attended by more than 20 countries of the Asia-Pacific region. However, the American and Chinese delegations, as well as their headings, defense ministers Lloyd Austin and Wei Fenghe respectively, attracted the greatest interest. The parties exchanged polemical blows regarding their attitude to the events in Ukraine, as well as to the flaring crisis around Taiwan.

On June 2, 2022, PIR Center held a Midweek Brainstorming Session, an informal expert seminar, on the topic “Taiwan's Nuclear Potential and Regional Security Issues”. The report on the topic was delivered by Larisa Savelyeva, PIR Center Intern of the Nuclear Nonproliferation & Russia Program, MSc graduate, Swedish Defense University (Stockholm, Sweden). This Midweek Brainstorming Session was held against the backdrop of the coming publication of a new PIR Center report “A New Nuclear Nine? Assessing the risks of nuclear proliferation in the world”, which will be released later this year.

The period from December 1991 to July 1992, from the point of view of registration of the succession of nuclear weapons located on the territory of the USSR at the time of its collapse, was transitional. On July 6, 1992, nine CIS States – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine – confirmed that they supported Russia's participation in the NPT as a nuclear-weapon state (NWS) and declared that they were ready to join the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). Thus, by this point the issue was legally closed. The issue of succession has been resolved, and the Russian Federation has become the rightful successor of the USSR in terms of possession of nuclear weapons. It was during these six months, or a little more, that the nuclear succession of the Russian Federation took shape, both legally and practically. This process was fraught with a number of difficulties, since the Soviet nuclear arsenal was distributed to almost all the now former Soviet republics, some of which saw this as an opportunity to significantly raise their status in the world community. This research paper contains the results of the PIR Center seminar "30 years of Russian nuclear succession", which brought together leading researchers and practitioners.