Ambassador Rogachev is the new Russian Ambassador to South Africa and he will draw the audience’s attention to the specifics of the system of international relations at the current stage. It will be a theoretical standpoint on modern international affairs and its main trends, as perceived by the Russian side: the current state of relations between the Russian Federation and the United States, rivalry between the US and China, new emerging centres of power and their influence on the balance of power (the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America). The Ambassador will look into the peculiarities intrinsic to the modern system of international relations, examine the new phenomena (such as the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, the impact of the novel coronavirus on the world and the Constitutional vote in Russia) and their effects. Analysing all this will, hopefully, give the audience a new perspective on what the future shape of the international landscape might be.
Ambassador Ilya Igorevich Rogachev graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1984 and joined the diplomatic service as a junior officer at the Embassy of the USSR in France. Thereafter he was appointed to be the Deputy Director of the Department on New Challenges and Threats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Between 2004 and 2009 he was the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Security Council in New York. From 2009 to 2019 he was the Director of the Department on New Challenges and Threats. He was appointed to be the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho in July 2019.
Irina Filatova is Professor Emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. She received her degrees at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia and worked there from 1973 to 1992, finishing her tenure as Professor and Head of the African Studies Department. From 1992–2002 she was Professor and Head of the Department of History at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal), and from 2000-2002, was Director of the School of Social Sciences of that university. She has taught at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow since 2004. Professor Filatova specialises in African history, the history of ties between Russia and South Africa, the history of the communist movement in South Africa, and the problems of race and ethnicity. She has authored dozens of articles, and edited several publications and books.
Sheila Camerer, Chair of SAIIA’s Western Cape Branch, will moderate the webinar.
Enquiries:
Pippa Segall