Interview of the Russian Ambassador to Albania Mikhail Afanasiev for ‘‘Albanian Daily News’’, February 24, 2020 - Intervistë

Interview of the Russian Ambassador to Albania Mikhail Afanasiev for ‘‘Albanian Daily News’’, February 24, 2020

1. In the first place I thank you, Mr. Ambassador, for this opportunity to have this interview, the first since you have started your tenure in Albania, and at the outset let me congratulate you and your staff on this holiday. On such an occasion, I would be interested to know some details on the significance of the Diplomat’s Day marked by Russia.

We mark the Diplomat’s day from the date of the establishment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1802 by the Russian Emperor Alexander I. Though the history of the Russian diplomatic service is much longer, the Ambassadorial Department (or `Posolsky Prikaz` in Russian) was created by Tsar Ivan the Terrible back in 1549.

In Russia, the profession of a diplomat has always been treated with honour and respect, and the reason for this lies in our history. The core of the diplomatic personnel of the Foreign Ministry has always included representatives of the intellectual and creative elite. Russian diplomacy cherishes the service of classics of the Russian literature such as poets Alexander Pushkin, Fedor Tyutchev and Alexei Tolstoy or playwright Alexander Griboedov. Nowadays we have a lot of poets, writers, artists and connoisseurs of history and world culture among Russian diplomats. The abundance of extraordinary individuals in the system of the Russian Foreign Ministry lies in the fact that a diplomat must be a versatile person. His tools are intelligence, extensive outlook, flexibility of mind, ability to find an approach to the interlocutor. Not everyone bestows such qualities.

2. Why has the 10^th of February been chosen as the day to honor the diplomatic profession and how is it marked in Russia and its diplomatic missions abroad? As a follow up, Your Excellency, the occasion prompts the interest to know some historical details of the Russian diplomacy?

We can talk about the history of Russian diplomacy for hours. In such a short interview, it makes more sense to dwell a bit upon the history of bilateral Russian-Albanian relations.

The Russian archives preserve the reports of Russian diplomats in Podgorica, Bitola and Skopje on the liberation struggle of the Albanian people before 1912. On that basis, Saint Petersburg made a fateful decision to recognise the independence of Albania at the London Conference of 1913.

Russian diplomats maintained close contacts with senior officials of a young state before and during the World War I. In particular, the Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, Sergey Sazonov was a friend of the Prime Minister of Albania, Turkhan-Pasha Permeti, who served as Ottoman Ambassador to St.Petersburg before returning to Albania. After the creation of the USSR, Soviet diplomats had been for a long time seeking to establish relations with Albania, which, however, became possible only in 1934. Then the Italian occupation of Albania followed (the delegation of the USSR to the League of Nations was one of the few who strongly condemned this act). The Soviet government praised the contribution of Albanian partisans to the fight against fascism and nazism. The USSR was the only among the three major Allies who established relations with the post-war Tirana. The corresponding note was handed over by the Soviet representative on November 10, 1945. After that the brightest period of our friendship began, and lasted until 1961.

After the signing of the Protocol on the normalization of relations between the USSR and the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania in 1990, Russian diplomats worked hard to restore the old ties. It is significant that even now most of our employees before arriving in Tirana are well aware of the history of the country, its traditions and speak fluent Albanian. Truly, the story of our bilateral diplomacy is worth a solid book.

3. In November 2019 you presented the Credentials starting your mission in Albania. Could you please unveil some of your main priorities in exercising your ambassadorial mission in this Balkan country, and which are your expectations for the future of the Albanian-Russian relations?

My main priorities are consolidation of the achieved results and further development of bilateral relations in all key areas – political, economic and humanitarian. I hope that a desire to build relations on a pragmatic and mutually beneficial basis will prevail on the Albanian side as well. As you know, it takes two to tango.

I will be honest – our political dialogue is currently undergoing a difficult period. An unpleasant surprise for me as a newly appointed Ambassador was the adoption of the resolution "Foreign Interventions in the Electoral Process and Disinformation in the National Democratic Processes" by the Albanian parliament – the only one of the national parliaments in Europe - just a few weeks after my arrival. The numerous baseless mentions of Russia was bewildering. It is also sad that the respected parliamentarians found time for this resolution just while Albania was recovering from a severe natural disaster.

I can assure you that the allegations about a certain “anti-Albanian vector” of the Russian foreign policy spread in the media and speeches of some politicians are groundless. How can one dismiss an idea about the attempts of certain "third powers" to drive a wedge between Tirana and Moscow? Russia's desire to develop friendly relations with all the states in the region can hardly be classified as “hostile actions”, and disagreements as to the status of Kosovo should be leveled through dialogue and consultations, rather than confrontation, and of course not through establishment of artificial barriers on the way to mutually beneficial cooperation.

However, I would like to believe in positive dynamics. This year, Russia and Albania have a chance to improve the situation. Albania assumed the role of the OSCE Chair. This means greater intensity of contacts between the parties, an exchange of views on various issues of not only a pan-European, but also bilateral nature. I hope this will help our countries to better understand each other. I am convinced that Albania and Russia, but to ideological considerations prevailing here, have no ground for bad relations – our peoples have warm feelings to each other, people have strong memories of the close friendship of Albania and the USSR in the post-war period. We share the common historical heritage of fighting the “brown plague” of Europe, which is especially important on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Victory.

4. Cultural diplomacy has become priority for people worldwide to know better each other. Incidentally your first appearance to Albanian public happened when the famous ‘Swan Lake' was shown by artists of St. Petersburg State Ballet on Ice in Tirana on November 16, 2019. In your greeting remarks, you said that humanitarian links between countries and people create a solid foundation. Will the field of culture, education and tourism be among your main priorities?

This is precisely the area in which cooperation between our countries is sustainable. Russian musical groups regularly visit Albania; the participation of our performers in the festivals here has already become a good tradition. It’s particularly nice that Albanian artists are visiting Russia - last year the Albanian singer Inis Neziri won the popular “New Wave” song festival. I remember the success of an outstanding Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, who performed the main part in “La damnation de Faust” by Hector Berlioz. During my first trip to Albania, I visited a filming set of a joint Russian-Albanian picture with the working title "Gjirokastër". It tells the tragic fate of the Soviet women and their Albanian husbands, who were repressed here after the breakdown of Soviet-Albanian relations. I hope this film will continue the tradition of cooperation between our filmmakers, started by the famous picture «Skanderbeg - the Great Warrior of Albania».

The Albanian students can still benefit from the Russian government program on scholarships providing for free studies at Russian universities and institutes. Last year, we granted 50 scholarships - an absolute record for the entire time of its existence. We hope for a wide interest from applicants this year too.

The study of the Russian language in Albania remains among the priorities. ​​The embassy is still running free language courses and they are very popular in Albania. However, we are concerned about the fate of the Russian language department at the University of Tirana, which is actually on the verge of closure. While observing a widespread revival of interest in learning Russian in Europe, winding it down at the university, in our opinion, does not meet the needs of Albania in training qualified interpreters for work in state, commercial and international structures.

5. An important aspect is the economic cooperation. What can you say on this, Mr. Afanasiev?  

Unfortunately, the state of the economic cooperation between our countries does not cause joy. Mutual trade after the fall in 2015 has been steadily growing, exceeding now 100 million euros. However, it goes mainly through intermediaries. There is no secret that most of Albanians bake bread from Russian grain, many fill their cars with Russian fuel, and build houses with Russian timber. At the same time, Albania, having joined the anti-Russian sanctions, denied itself access to our huge market for its products, which, by the way, were quite popular in Russia.

Nowadays there is not a single Russian company operating in Albania. Though, as far as I know, over the past ten years a number of large Russian stakeholders have been interested in entering the local market; there was even an isolated case when one Russian company was present in the mining sector for a short time. However, the investment climate for them is far from being favorable, not to mention the direct squeezing out under the pretext of a “threat from Russian investments” for the Albanian national security. Let me be frank: as a result of such an attitude, the interest of large Russian business in coming to your country is steadily declining though railroad construction, oil and gas exploration and production, hydro-, heat- and solar energy could still be of interest.

Nevertheless, the Embassy will make every effort to develop economic cooperation, enhance the activities of the bilateral Intergovernmental Commission and protect the interests of Russian business in this country. However, today the ball is on the Albanian side.

6. Albania has the rotating presidency of the OSCE this year. How do you consider this position for this country, and secondly, is it expected a visit of PM Rama to Moscow and a meeting with President Putin as OSCE Chairperson-in-Office after his visit to Ukraine?

Taking this opportunity, I would like to congratulate Albania on this crucial mission – taking OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office. Russia has a special attitude to this Organization – the first meetings on security and cooperation were convened in 1973 upon a joint USSR and some European states` initiative and became an effective tool for building confidence between the competing military and political blocs.

The OSCE has also played a great role in resolving conflict situations in Europe over the past 30 years. The focus of the organization’s peacekeeping is currently made on the Eastern Ukrainian conflict.

Now, as in the first years of the Organization, the OSCE needs a wise and flexible approach of the member states, a strong political will to overcome the current situation of mutual distrust and growing risks to the European security. A lot depends on the Chairing country of the Organization, on its ability to take balanced decisions and hear different points of view. We wish Tirana good luck in this difficult task. I believe that the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mr.Edi Rama will have an opportunity to discuss these burning issues in detail with the Russian side in Moscow as the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office at the end of February.

7. Russia shows keen interest in Western Balkans being present with multifaceted relations with different regional countries. First, how do you assess the situation in the region and secondly, which is your answer to claims that Russia’s increasing interference constitutes a threat to region’s stability?

Russia is not "interfering" anywhere. As you correctly noted, we are talking about our interest, that is totally legal. I stress: historically we have had close ties with all countries of the region since their independence. Russia reacted and influenced the resolution of crises; at certain times, it was the key economic and political partner of most of the Balkan countries. You may be surprised, but even today the Russian and EU Foreign Affairs bodies hold regular expert consultations on the integration of the Western Balkans and EU enlargement (COWEB and COELA), that is a clear indicator of our active role in the region.

Many problems of the Western Balkans are common in the wider macro-region of Southeast and Eastern Europe. There are economic, social and demographic challenges, which, in the absence of due attention, risk to become "time bombs." That is why Russia, like the rest of Europe, is interested in a stable and sustainable development of the region, preventing bursts of chauvinism and possible hotbeds of regional conflicts, peacefully resolving the existing differences.

At the same time, we are noting the alarming trends for the regional security, which we constantly discuss with our Balkan and Western partners. From the very beginning, we objected a completely mindless policy of dragging states into the NATO military bloc, and we warned of an arms race danger. From the very beginning, we refused to accept the position of some Western partners, compelling the East European countries to "make friendship against someone". Exactly such an approach is spreading an atmosphere of mistrust between the countries and carries risks for regional stability, and it is the real reason for groundless accusations against our country of interference in the Balkan affairs. Our approach is a multi-vector cooperation on a mutually beneficial basis: who, if not Russia, bordering 18 (!) countries, should preach such a principle?

8. My final question, Mr. Ambassador, is if you have ever been to Albania. Which is your perception of Albania’s history and people, particularly their traditions and cultural heritage?    

I came to Albania for the first time and I already have the most positive impression of your country. Over the past few months, my spouse and I visited different parts of Albania, and it helped us to appreciate a huge natural, historical and, therefore, tourist potential of these places. We`ve been to the wonderful cities of Gjirokastër and Krujë, we saw Durrës before and after the tragic events. I`m planning to visit the great centers of Albanian culture - Berat, Korça and Shkodra. I have heard about the beauties of the Albanian Riviera. I would like to study in more detail the life and culture of Albanians, who retained their unique features despite the upheavals of a complex history. I admire the sympathy and hospitality of local residents, the unique atmosphere of small towns, cafes and restaurants, which is so difficult to meet today due to the modern trends of globalization and unification. It is nice that Albanians treat our country with warmth despite sometimes unfriendly political rhetorics. I hope that in my capacity of Russian Ambassador I will be able to strengthen the existing and build new bridges of friendship between our peoples. We have all the prerequisites for that.