Letter From the Editors
Buttons and bows were on full display this week at two Eastern-centric events – the SCO summit in Bishkek, and the Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum (EEF). The summit also marked a milestone, as the SCO turned 25 this year. According to Russian Deputy FM Sergei Ryabkov, the SCO “has outgrown its regional framework and is already capable of helping to solve global problems related to overhauling the structure of international relations.” This included the usual jab at the Bretton Woods system and the need to overhaul the UN to make it more democratic.
Putin’s first meeting at the SCO was, unsurprisingly, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But all eyes were on the Russian president’s meeting with Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan. Prior to meeting with Putin, Pashinyan sat down with Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev, and then followed up that conversation by meeting with Indian PM Modi. The tête-à-tête with Putin was all the more tense, since the day before the Russian leader sent birthday wishes to Pashinyan’s political nemesis, former president Robert Kocharyan, who is currently in pretrial detention.
According to Armenian journalist Armen Khanbabyan, Moscow has yet to wake up to a new reality – Armenia circa 2024 is not the same country it was on the eve of the fateful war with Azerbaijan. Indeed, the fact that an Armenian leader’s meeting with the president of Azerbaijan would be more cordial than with the Russian president seemed like the stuff of science fiction at the time of the SCO’s founding in 2001. So while Yerevan believes a “grand transformation” in relations with Russia is overdue, writes Khanbabyan, Moscow still insists on a familiar bilateral track.
Meanwhile, in Vladivostok: The debate at this year’s EEF centered around the usual energy projects, herring production (of which there is an abundance, apparently) and the riddle of what to do with zoomers in the work force. Some officials argued that putting zoomers in charge in the legal sector, for one, would spell chaos for this distinguished profession (“They’ll come up with all sorts of things without any rules, and then who’ll be left to clean up the mess?”). But others, like banker Andrei Kostin, supported the idea that “the boss should be older, and the rest should be young.”
If you ask zoomers – or their parents – getting into any profession right now is akin to winning the lottery. In fact, Russian officials have been subtly (and not so subtly) pushing for more high school students to go into vocational training instead of higher ed. Many high schoolers worry about passing the dreaded Basic State Exam, which determines whether ninthgraders will be able to pass to 10th grade and stay on a college track. And as Republic writes, for boys the vocational route also poses greater risk of military conscription, since you can only get one deferment to complete your education. Because vocational education takes less time than getting a university degree, and young people get into vocational schools earlier, this leaves young men extremely vulnerable to the draft.
Meanwhile, students attempting to get into universities face yet another exam hurdle – to get a budget spot where the state covers your tuition, you need an impossibly high score on your Unified State Exam. At the same time, if parents are willing to pay, a much lower score is often sufficient to guarantee admission. This leaves families wondering whether paying a tutor to get a better grade on the test is even worth it. Interestingly, when asked about this troubling trend in education at the EEF, Vladimir Putin responded with a casual “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Maybe he was too busy picking out a birthday card for Robert Kocharyan to notice the crisis that his own loyal officials created.