Russia’s Foreign Policy on Global Health and South Korea’s Declining Birth Rate

Editors' Note

On Wednesday, news broke that the Joe Biden administration would impose U.S. sanctions on Russia for its efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election. Similar sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine prompted Russia to release a new Foreign Policy Concept in 2023.

This week, the Wilson Center's Nataliya Shok leads a miniseries about how Russian health engagement—combined with political, economic, and military initiatives—supports a broader foreign policy strategy of elevating Russian power in an international system not dominated by the United States.

Next, Julio S. Castro Méndez and Victoria E. Castro Trujillo from the National Hospital Survey in Venezuela explore how Russia's cooperation with the Latin American country—on access to insulin and tropical disease surveillance—has done little to improve health outcomes but has drawn President Nicolás Maduro and his government closer to the Kremlin.

A third piece by the Makerere University School of Public Health's Aloysius Ssennyonjo and Eric Ssegujja addresses how the pandemic provided new avenues for Russia to raise the importance of health in Uganda. The move supports African efforts to exercise the right of self-determination and strengthen national sovereignty while increasing Russia's presence and influence on the continent.

Switching gears, journalist Susan Kreimer analyses the causes of South Korea's falling birth rate and the pronatalist policies that could help reverse that trend.

To wrap up the issue, CFR's Mariel Ferragamo explains how scorching temperatures across Africa, made worse by climate change, imperil women and girls.

Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor