The Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) launched the Russian edition of SIPRI Yearbook 2016 at a special event in Moscow on 3 October 2017. In addition to the translated content, the volume also contains a Special Supplement compiled by IMEMO experts and guest contributors.
The event generated considerable interest within the Russian and foreign expert community, bringing together more than 50 representatives of governmental organizations and agencies, embassies, institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, independent research centers, NGOs and media. The launch presentation focused on the Yearbook’s timely coverage of international security issues, which inspired lively discussion among the attendees. Alexei G. Arbatov, Head of the Center for International Security at IMEMO, opened the event by highlighting that the book reflected both SIPRI and IMEMO’s high professional standards.
Alexander A. Dynkin, IMEMO President, emphasized the particular importance of cooperation between the two institutes in the current crisis of international security. He noted that in the more than two decades of the project’s existence that relations between Russia and the West had travelled ‘from big hopes to big disappointments’, having reached the current level of heightened military-political and economic tensions. He also argued that the Russian edition of the SIPRI Yearbook was an indispensable source of reference information, calling it ‘the bible of the country’s expert community’.
One of the founders of the project, Vladimir G. Baranovsky, Head of Scientific Division at the IMEMO Center for Situation Analysis, pointed out that the current political background to the SIPRI Yearbook 2016 and Special Supplement was marked by a high level of instability, making continued cooperation between the two institutes even more valuable.
The Russian edition of the SIPRI Yearbook is a multi-year joint project of IMEMO and SIPRI, a successful collaboration that will mark its 25th anniversary in 2018.