The article covers the policy of the Russian Federation in the field of international information security. The purpose of the study is to identify the key directions for strengthening international cooperation in the area of information security. The article examines the state of bilateral cooperation on international information security issues in particular on the example of the Agreement between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on cooperation in the field of international information security. The article analyzes Russian initiatives put forward in regional and multilateral organizations. Thus, special attention is paid to cooperation within BRICS, the SCO, the CSTO and ASEAN. Regional and interregional interaction in this area increases stability and security of the respective regions, taking into account the national interests of the parties involved. The article also studies the Russian projects promoted at the global level, namely, the UN General Assembly resolutions adopted by the initiative of the Russian Federation. Russia and its partners contributed to the adoption of a set of 13 international rules, principles and norms of responsible behavior of states in the information space. Convocation of an Open-Ended Working Group, whose mandate has been extended until 2025, has become an important contribution of Russia to institutionalization of the profile discussion mechanism within the UN. The author concludes that Russian projects and cooperation agreements reached can foster the development of political and legal framework of the international information security system. The focus on promoting the formation of such a system is confirmed by the updated Basic principles of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the field of international information security. However, these initiatives are not exhaustive. Therefore, the formation of such a system requires the efforts of the entire world community.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the algocognitive culture, the new reality that humanity has already entered, but remains far from being understood. Today we can speak about dissolution of the concept of privacy: almost all actions of a person, including his daily trips, his social circle and values it shares, his correspondence and purchases are automatically observed, and completely transparent to information corporations. The problem of fake news has become insurmountable: their appearance into the information cascade converts in an event immediately, making later investigations and refutations almost obsolete. A «culture of cancellation» has emerged, within which a priori there is no criteria for good and evil, where it has become possible to «delete» from the information circulation any arrays of knowledge that do not meet the requirements of the self-proclaimed «new ethics», and to ostracize people associated with them. The author compares the current state of affairs with the era of the dominance of sophists in ancient Greece, when the truth was determined depending on the conjuncture, and finds relevant parallels. In this context, the author formulates the concept of «cognitive vulnerability»: the new reality makes possible control of the masses of people, setting not only their consumer, but also political behavior. The author defines network reality as an alternative system of socialization, where the «network» ontology and values turn out to be more competitive than real ones, and therefore de facto displace them. The latter becomes possible due to a kind of «splitting» of the personality, when the emotional reaction is de facto separated from the real goal-oriented activity, and connected with the virtual reality. Ruling algorithms in social networks are aimed at achieving this goal: for an example author turns to recent investigation by The Wall Street Journal regarding Facebook: the MSI algorithm used by the latter provokes disputes and splits on every occasion. De facto, this leads to a situation where American information corporations are moving towards the new quality of the actual owner of sovereignty over the consciousness of the external societies. This challenge has already been met by China: since September 1, 2021, Beijing had nationalized algorithms, and handed control over them to the Communist Party. The author analyzes the steps taken by China and comes to the conclusion that in case of success China will become not only an economic, but also an ideological alternative to America, thereby making a bid to restore a bipolar world political system.

The global digital revolution transforms technological and economic structures, social relations and the very philosophy of human life. Along with that, it has a dramatic impact on states as key actors in international relations. For many centuries sovereignty has been a fundamental principle of a functioning state and has been mainly defined in physical and geographical terms. However, the transboundary nature of the digital environment has brought new issues to the agenda: how actors, including states, should function in a new digital reality; where the borders between the ‘national’ and the ‘transnational’ should lie and by which rules the new environment should be regulated. The key question summarizing all the above-stated is: ‘What does “state sovereignty” mean in the digital era?’. To answer this question, the article identifies key characteristics of digital space vis-à-vis sovereignty, studies the evolution of two approaches to the internet – as a new exceptional environment or as the next stage of telecommunications’ development – and points out challenges to maintaining digital sovereignty along with ways to mitigate them. Noting that the digital space is a unique environment for intergovernmental interaction which continuously evolves due to technological progress and the socio-economic practices, the authors observe the organic emergence of cyber-borders which brings seemingly obsolete idea of state sovereignty back into play. Modern states face a difficult challenge: how to find effective mechanisms to ensure sovereignty in the digital space without losing the benefits of the digital revolution while guaranteeing the equality and security of all parties involved. The absence of unified methodology and generally accepted conceptual terms in the previous scientific studies and political practice underpins the academic novelty of the research. At the same time, the study is practically oriented, since it is the digital technological sovereignty of the state that serves as a basis of its leadership in the new era and as a necessary condition for establishing and maintaining political independence and national coherence.

In 2017, negotiations on the free trade area between India and the EAEU countries entered an active phase. The directions of the negotiation process cover the issues of import tariff liberalization, and the elimination of non-tariff restrictions. The study aims at quantifying the potential impact of mutual tariff liberalization on the dynamics of bilateral trade between Russia and India, in order to develop key principles for Russia's negotiating position (as part of the EAEU), taking into account its strategic priorities. The research methodology bases on the SMART partial equilibrium model and a qualitative analysis of contemporary trends in import demand and the degree of India’s trade protectionism towards imports from the EAEU countries. The study found that the symmetric bilateral tariff liberalization may result in the higher potential increase in Russian exports to India than in the corresponding effects on imports, which will increase the bilateral trade surplus. This is in the interests of Russia, but it hardly meets the strategic interests of India due to its chronic trade deficit. The free trade area may lead to the diversification of the commodity component of Russian exports due to the growing export supplies of Russian coal, to a lesser extent – of metals (aluminum, copper and articles thereof). However, the opportunities to increase the share of high-tech products in the structure of Russian exports remain limited. The free trade area can become an important tool for strengthening Russian exporters of fertilizers, as well as certain categories of agricultural products. In turn, Indian exporters can strengthen their positions on the Russian market of medicines, as well as increase the share of textile products, jewelry and certain categories of agricultural products. The results can serve for developing the position of Russia (as a EAEU member) in multilateral negotiations.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, international migration was a global process with multilateral population movements between states. Migration provided countries with significant opportunities for development, providing an influx of intellectual capital, labor, and financial resources. For example, in some developing countries, remittances from migrant workers have been comparable to, and in recent years even exceeded, FDI and aid. According to the UN in 2020, every seventh inhabitant of the Earth was a migrant. In fact, migration has become a global factor in the development of societies and economies. The COVID-19 pandemic has made significant adjustments to international migration, and has also significantly transformed both international and national labor markets. In relation to the international labor market, the pandemic can be seen as a negative externality, and the result of its negative impact was the failure of the economy in general and the labor market in particular. The failure of the labor market was expressed in the instability of supply and demand, which led to a change in working conditions and employment, an increase in structural imbalances in terms of compensation for work and the distribution of labor resources across sectors of the economy, as well as a decrease in the importance of professional forms of organization of the workforce. With regard to the processes of international migration, one can state the formation of the phenomenon of the “post-COVID syndrome”, which refers to the restoration of the scale of migration flows after a pandemic, accompanied by a transformation of the factors and structure of migration. Due to the high importance of migration flows for national economies and the world economy, these changes will be able to significantly transform the international and national labor markets, in which migrants occupied significant niches. In this regard, the issue of monitoring and improving the mechanisms for managing migration in crisis and post-COVID conditions at the international and national levels is being updated.

The article analyzes the current state of India-China relations, their main elements and prospects. We identify key factors strengthening bilateral India-China cooperation including the high level of political interaction, institutional framework of the relations, common approaches to solving the core issues on the international agenda and extensive economic ties. We also study the main fields of confrontation between India and China which include territorial disputes, fight for access to water and energy resources and rivalry for regional and global influence. The article identifies the elements that undermine the established system of the relations, especially mutual enmity between the states, imbalances in their trade, the third parties’ policies in Asia, divergent stances on some regional and international issues which are crucial for both countries, as well as the spreading COVID-19 infection – a new factor in the international politics and economy. We conclude that India-China relations are characterized by ambiguity and controversy. On the one hand, they have a solid political and economic foundation, but, on the other, they are complicated by a wide range of old and new problems that do not allow the sides to build effective cooperation in many spheres. We also provide a characterization of India-China ‘forced partnership’ and focus on the phenomenon of securitization of bilateral economic interaction. The paper pays particular attention to the assessment of complementarity of the two countries’ economic systems. It analyzes the prospects of India-China cooperation, opportunities for deepening their ties in trade and investments, energy sphere, science and technology, culture and interpersonal relations. We have also considered the possibility of the confrontation escalation in a range of relations fields into an open military conflict and assessed whether existing differences and mutual claims can impact future development of the ties between India and China. The conclusion underlines both disinterest of both sides in a full-scale war and unpredictability of India’s and China’s behavior in the conditions of instability in the international and regional arena.

The paper explores the effect of different stakeholders (the definition of the term "stakeholder" within this research paper is presented in the Introduction) on the income generation of the university. There is a growing focus from the research perspective and university management on the ability of universities to sustain their financial sustainability due to the shortage of financial support from the government. Adopting different instruments, university faculty is one of the vital stakeholders for generating revenues for the university via engaging with different actors. This research adopted quantitative techniques by applying secondary data on university-industry collaboration in the UK to evaluate the effect of different stakeholders on university financial positions. The results show that government and Industry are among the initial stakeholders to contribute to university financial results while the support of other actors is vital but different across university types. This research can be helpful for university managers as a guide to explain different paths of collaboration with stakeholders that can lead to different strategies to increase university income.

Being a large-scale internal challenge to the European integration project, the growth of populism in the EU has a projection on the foreign policy of both national states and the European Union. A Russian vector of the EU’s policy is a domain where the deviation of populist programs and strategies from the positions of the mainstream parties is most evident. In this regard, it is crucial to understand how the foreign policy orientations of European populists affect the most important principle and value of the EU – solidarity, in particular, in the EU's foreign policy towards Russia. Using an ideological approach to understanding populism and a comparative analysis of the foreign policy programs of populist actors in Germany, United Kingdom and Hungary, the article concludes that the deviations of right-wing populist parties (AfD, UKIP, Fidesz) and left-wing populist ("Left") are expressed in different ways, degrees and suggest different accents: the “strategic alliance” towards Russia among in the cases of AfD and the “Left”; pragmatic pro-Russian attitude in the case of Fidesz, ambivalent attitude in the case of UKIP. Despite the predominantly pro-Russian rhetoric, populism in power and in the opposition does not have the capacity to dismantle solidarity and the European consensus in the EU's foreign policy towards Russia. The nature of populism as an ideology and the instrumental use by left and right populists of the "Russian issue" for "domestic consumption" are a significant barrier to a real challenge to the EU's policy towards Russia. Moreover, the populists serve as a convenient "sparring partner" to strengthen the existing solidarity in the EU on the issue of relations with Russia.

This article continues the dispute about the application of quantitative methods in regard to international relations. In 2019, two groups of scholars published their critical reviews of my article “Statistic Against History”: 1) «Towards “Second Great Debate” in Russian IR» (by Denis Degterev); 2) «International Relations, Science without Method?” (by Igor Istomin, Andrey Baykov, Konstantin Khudoley). This paper consistently analyses the opponents's views and puts forward some counterarguments. The author emphasizes that natural sciences deal with long-term, relatively steady phenomena and processes, which are objective and mainly of repetitive character. This enables us to identify regular patterns in their structure, behaviour, development and changes. By contrast, in the sphere of arts it is extremely important to achieve agreement on basic concepts and ideas or, in other words, scientific convention. It is impossible to use here mathematical symbols or figures to describe the concepts in the sphere which is closely connected with historical context and systems of values, which changes with the time and depends on different variables. The objects of humanities are completely determined by such factors as society, historical context as well as the stance of the author on the issue. Any attempt to change even one of these may well lead to distortion of the meaning of a concept and thus will ruin the mathematical equation underlying it. These factors do not exist regardless of humans, so it is impossible to dismiss Aristotle's logic. Hence, any attempts of such an approach (through using quantitative methods) lead to methodological problems and even often to methodological nonsense.