In international organizations, states seek representation not only in decision-making and political fora but also in the administrative bodies, or secretariats. This article maps the representation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in the secretariats of 36 bodies of the United Nations (UN) system in the years 1996-2015. The CEE region is interesting due to the deep political divide between Russia and the Western-oriented new EU member states. Using new empirical evidence regarding the participation of CEE countries’ citizens on the professional staff of the UN bodies, we show that Russia has dramatically lost much of its representation in the UN administration over the last twenty years. In contrast, a number of other CEE countries have considerably improved their position in it. In spite of that, the countries of the entire CEE region belong to those with an overall weak representation in the administrative bodies of the UN.

The Russian Federation has been for several years characterized as having both domestic resources and the corresponding desire to re-establish some of the influences in the international affairs, resembling the ones it used to have during the Soviet times. In this manner, it seeks to re-establish the status not only by military means, but by diplomatic tools as well, which are at the center of this research. To be more concrete, the purpose of this research paper is to map and explain Russian non-military strategies on the Arctic region. The main questions are, therefore, as follows: (a) What is the attitude of the Russian Federation toward the Arctic region? and (b) What are the factors that contribute to this attitude? As indicated by many, the states with political ambitions share conservatism mainly related to economics and relative suspicion toward the well-established multilateral institutions, while preferring bilateral relations or being establishing partners in emerging organizations. Apart from what has been mentioned above, this paper intends to develop such an argument and test it on the particular case of the Arctic region. It, in essence, argues that Russia prefers bilateral approach in case of negotiations over the issues of its core national interests and is inclined to multilateral options in case of soft issue areas. However, although Russian bilateral relations attract sufficient scholarly attention, its presence in multilateral institutions is still an under-researched area. This research paper aims at contributing to global discussion by providing an answer on what is Russian attitude in multilateral institutions and what factors contribute to this behavior. As for the hypothesis, it shall be tested on the empirical data from content analysis of official documents (press releases and governmental statements), provided by the online archive of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

In the light of the turbulence in the post-Soviet space, consolidation of the regime, and prevention of possible dangers to it have always been among the main goals of domestic politics for Moscow. While lessons can be drawn from external revolutions, the regional context is as important because it allows testing what works in the Russian context. What may work in Cairo may not be effective in Kazan. Existing analyses focused on Russia primarily look at a general picture, or occasionally Moscow and/or St. Petersburg. Therefore, this paper tests the hypothesis that during the third Putin presidency, the Kremlin developed practices at both regional and federal levels to ensure regime survival when faced with protests. I believe that the nature of a protest influences governmental response. I divide the protests by the type of demonstration, their length, and demands. I find that regardless of the type of protest, regional governments are more concerned with cracking down, whereas, at the federal level, crackdowns are primarily on political protests.