With all of this as background, I am in Russia with a group of 44 U.S. citizens and one Irish under the auspices of the 40-year-old organization, the Center for Citizens Initiatives (CCI). CCI, under the leadership of organization founder Sharon Tennison, has been bringing groups of Americans to Russia and arranging for Russians to visit the U.S. for over 40 years in citizen-to-citizen diplomacy initiatives. Both groups learn about our respective countries with the goal of somehow convincing our politicians and government leaders that military and economic confrontation, while profitable for the economic elites, is disastrous for humanity in general and it needs to stop.
After Russians were guests of Americans in the 1990s and were invited to various civic events during their stays in the U.S., CCI groups assisted in forming in Russia civic groups such as Rotarians and at the request of the Soviet government in the 1980s, brought the first Alcoholics Anonymous specialists to Russia.
The CCI delegations typically begins in Moscow with dialogue with political, economic and security experts, followed by trips to other parts of Russia and ending with a wrap-up in St. Petersburg.
In a major logistical challenge, the September 2018 CCI group broke into small delegations, a group visiting one of 20 cities before reconvening in St. Petersburg. CCI hosts in Barnaul, Simferopol, Yalta, Sebastopol, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kazan, Krasnodar, Kungur, Perm, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Perm, Sergiev Posad, Torzhok, Tver, Ufa, and Yakutsk introduced members of our delegation to life outside of Moscow.
This year the four days in Moscow in early September unfolded with speakers on the international and domestic political, security and economic environments in Russia today. I had been on a CCI delegation three years in 2016 so I was interested in the changes since then. This year we dialogued with a couple of analysts we met three years ago and as well as new observers of the Russian scene. Most were fine with our filming their presentations which are available now on Facebook and which later will be available in professional format at www.cssif.org. Other presenters asked that we not film and that their comments be non-attributable.
While in Moscow, we spoke with:
-- Vladimir Pozner, TV journalist and political analysist;
-- Vladimir Kozin, strategic and nuclear analyst, author of numerous books on the international security and arms control and the U.S. Missile Defense system;
-- Peter Kortunov, political analyst, son of Andrey Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council;
--Rich Sobel, U.S. businessman in Russia;
--Chris Weafer, head of Macro Advisory and former chief strategist at Sherbank, Russia's largest state bank;
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