Chairman of the Department of International Relations, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia. He is also the director of the Centre for East Asian and Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University), MFA of the Russian Federation. He worked at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Soviet Embassy to the PRC, and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. From 2000 to 2006, he was an Associate Researcher at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. In November 2011 he was appointed Vice-President of the Russian Diplomatic Academy (for research and international cooperation).