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Kadri Liik

Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Europe

Kadri Liik is a Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Europe. Her expertise includes Russian domestic and foreign policy, especially Russia–West relations, and the EU’s policy toward Russia. Prior to joining Carnegie Europe, Ms Liik worked at the European Council on Foreign Relations, first based in its London office and later in Berlin. In 2006, Ms Liik became the first director of Estonia's leading think tank, the International Centre for Defence and Security, and founded the centre's Lennart Meri Conference in 2007. Ms Liik started her career as a journalist. From the mid-1990s until 2002, she served as the Moscow correspondent for various Estonian media outlets. Later, she was a Foreign Editor at the daily Postimees and Editor-in-Chief of the foreign policy magazine, Diplomaatia. She has also hosted a weekly radio talk show on foreign affairs. Liik holds an MA in international affairs from Lancaster University.  
Subjects:
Authoritarianism, Belarus, Conservatism, Defence, Democracy, Economy, Europe, European Union, Future, Germany, History, Identity, Liberalism, Russia, Ukraine, United States, West
Updated: April 23, 2026

Agenda

Burning the Archive: When Memory Becomes a Battlefield
LMC 2026
These Boots Were Made for Walking: Russia’s Relations with the West
LMC 2025
The EU’s Russia Policy: All Quiet on the Western Front?
LMC 2023
Authoritarianism, Economy, Future, Russia
Recent Poll of Levada Centre: Dance of Little Swans Back on State TV?
LMC 2022
Authoritarianism, Democracy, Russia
Russian Civil Society and Media. Inter Malleum et Incudem – Between a Rock and a Hard Place
LMC 2021
Russia
One’s Own Place in the World? Russia’s Rising Generation
LMC 2019
6 more

Side events

European Union, Russia
Post-Crimea Shift in EU-Russia Relations: From Fostering Interdependence to Managing Vulnerabilities

The book explores mutual dependencies between the EU and Russia in a number of fields, including energy, trade, financial sector, defence industry, cross-border cooperation, and perhaps most importantly, security, and analyzes the perceptions, vulnerabilities, and ways to manage the ties on both sides.

LMC 2019

Articles

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks by phone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 28, 2017.
Conservatism, Democracy, Identity, Liberalism, Russia, United States, West
The Nature of Our Russia-Challenge and How to Address It

If the West manages to rejuvenate its own democracy, then it can have another conversation with Russia about world order – and have it Western terms.

Kadri Liik
LMC 2017

Talks

Kadri Liik and Thomas Bagger
Europe, Germany, History, Russia
Time for International Sobriety

The world of yesterday is gone or rapidly eroding, and it makes it hard to establish foreign policy directions. In the great power competition, Europe seems to be confused because Russia today is not the Russia that the West imagined it to become after 1989.…

Thomas Bagger ,  Kadri Liik
January 25, 2021

In the news

Kadri Liik. Me peame rääkima Saksamaast

Edasi.org, June 7, 2022

Kadri Liik: loosungitega probleemide tapetseerimine on mõttetu ja ka igav

ERR (Estonian Public Broadcasting), September 10, 2021