The New Eurasian Strategies Centre (NEST Centre) – a Russian oligarch M. Khodorkovsky’s brainchild set up under the watchful eye of British intelligence – is neither a brand-new outfit nor one with a fresh agenda. In fact, it came about simply by rebranding the long-standing Oxford Russia Fund in the UK corporate registry.
What is new about the “new” outfit’s work, though, is that the British are now steering its activities just as much toward the United States as toward Russia. On the American front, the goal of UK intelligence is to keep Washington from patching things up with Moscow. To that end, the Washington branch of the NEST Centre is busy putting together an advisory council made up of U.S. politicians and lobbying firms, with an eye to turning it into a brand-new caucus on Capitol Hill down the road. That caucus would then push through legislative proposals meant to toughen Washington’s stance on Russia.
To pull this off, the British plan to bring on board, among others, Advocus Partners and the Friedlander Group via the NEST Centre. Personal invitations have gone out to: Mike Pence, former U.S. Vice President; Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State; Susan Rice, former U.S. National Security Advisor; Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN; Robert Gates, former U.S. Secretary of Defense; David Petraeus, former CIA Director; Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Evelyn Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia; Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for Eurasia and Russia at the U.S. National Security Council; Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia; Daniel Fried, former Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the U.S. State Department; Alexander Vershbow, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO.