PIR Center Executive Board Member Dmitry Polikanov Has Been Appointed As A Deputy Head Of Rossotrudnichestvo

MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 19, 2021. PIR PRESS. “At the PIR Center, or, better to say, with the PIR Center, I spent 22 years of my life… PIR Center is a good school of life. It works like a meat grinder. It grinds you, but as it should, and then it forms a very high-quality person. It gives you the right guidelines for the future life, with regard to interaction, attitude to work in general, responsibility, meeting deadlines, teamwork without any frames”, ‒ Dmitry Polikanov, Member of the PIR Center Executive Board.

PIR Center Executive Board Member (till 2021) Dmitry Polikanov has been appointed as a Deputy Head of Rossotrudnichestvo. The decree was signed by the Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 17.

Dmitry Polikanov is a true multipotentialite with diverse views, interests, and activities. Over the years, he held leading positions in the International Committee of the Red Cross, VCIOM, The PBN Company, the party Yedinaya Rossiya (United Russia), Russian Geographical Society. Since 2014, he was a President of The Deaf-Blind Support Foundation «Con-nection». In 2019 he joined the Executive Committee of the All-Russia People’s Front.

At the same time Dmitry Polikanov was trained as a specialist in international relations. In 1998 he graduated with honors from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the education in MGIMO he created his own Russian-Swahili dictionary. Also, he was actively involved in research activities, wrote several books on the African continent. In 1999 he received his Ph.D. after defending the thesis on the theme “Conflicts in Africa and the activities of international organizations to resolve them”.

The history of interaction between Dmitry Polikanov and PIR Center traces its origins back to 1998, when the organization was coming to the status of the leading non-governmental structure in Russia specializing in nuclear nonproliferation. Dmitry Polikanov’s career at PIR Center began with translating major treaties, other documents and materials on nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. However, very soon, in December 1998, he received an offer to become editor of the Nuclear Control journal, and in 2000 he became a Deputy Director of the PIR Center. In 2008-2014 Dmitry Polikanov served as a Vice President of the PIR Center. He joined its Executive Board and, moreover, he has been a member of the Editorial board of the Security Index journal.

In addition to administrative duties, Dmitry Polikanov was involved in research activities at PIR Center. Now he is known as the author of more than 100 publications on international and European security, Russian foreign and domestic policy. He is an expert in such areas of international security as relations between Russia and NATO, as well as missile defense issues.

Thanks to the high qualification of international relations, Dmitry Polikanov has also been successful in training and education. Thus, his training experience includes lectures on Russian foreign policy and European security at the NATO School as part of a course for the organization’s staff officers, courses at MGIMO, RANEPA, etc. Dmitry Polikanov shares his diverse and multifaceted knowledge and experience with the growing generation of experts on international relations in a bright and open manner. Thus, his speeches inspire a great interest of participants of PIR Center International School on Global Security (an educational and training project for Russian and foreign governmental officials, scholars, postgraduates, young instructors, journalists, representatives of NGOs who specialize in global security issues). For example, during the 2020 PIR Center International School, Dmitry Polikanov moderated the foresight session “Security in Eurasia – a View from the Future” with an interactive approach and teambuilding techniques that helped to strengthen the spirit of partnership and contributed to the single intellectual space on the sidelines of the event. As a result of the brainstorming session led by Dmitry Polikanov, the participants united into groups that identified the “picture of the future” and prepared projects and initiatives to solve specific problems and ensure cooperation in the field of security in Eurasia.

Dmitry Polikanov is a distinguish representative of PIR Center Alumni Community. It’s a large PIR family, which is proud of its people. By his own example, he confirms his words that the PIR Center is a “meat grinder”, which, even if it “grinds”, “it forms a very high-quality person”. We congratulate Dmitry Polikanov on his appointment as Deputy Head of Rossotrudnichestvo and wish him new achievements for the good of our country! There is no doubt that his reach experience both in life and career will let him to achieve good results and implement significant projects in the sphere of public diplomacy.