Trends of NGOs’ diplomacy as a “soft power” tool in the new international political realms: case of the Republic of Karelia

Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic and the acute confrontation between Russia and Western countries jeopardized the implementation of a number of international projects in the early 2020s. Closed borders made it much more difficult for the academic and expert community to maintain personal and professional contacts. The opposing sides pursue a policy of “withdrawal culture”. This unfavorable international political environment stimulates the search for new formats of cooperation and rethinking of long-known channels of interaction. In the current foreign policy circumstances, the tools for open dialog and preserving the climate of trust between the regional communities of Russia and foreign countries are rising their importance: even though they turn out to be very limited, these were not completely closed, as it happened at the interstate level.