As part of the Graduate Initiative in Russian Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, a faculty member and four graduate students in the Institute’s Graduate School of International Policy and Management will be visiting the Russian Far East in March 2015. The trip is fully funded by the grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to support the Initiative in Russian Studies. The four students are Jessica Yoo, Kathryn Smart, Jack Lomicky, and Lewis Dorman, who were selected on a competitive basis. The visit to the Russian Far East is a part of a semester-long seminar “Russia and East Asia,” taught by Professor Tsuneo Akaha, which examines Russia’s evolving relations with East Asian countries and the role played by the Russian Far East in those relations. In the seminar, Professor Akaha and the students are developing research questions they will pursue when they visit Vladivostok and Khabarovsk from March 22-28. In Vladivostok the team will engage professors and students at the Far Eastern Federal University, as well as local experts and journalists in discussions of the political, economic, security, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s relationship with her neighboring Asian countries and the United States. In Khabarovsk, the group will visit the Economic Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences’ Far Eastern Branch, and discuss the same issues with researchers, students, and journalists. Upon return to Monterey, they will compile their findings into a research report. The participants are very excited about this project, particularly the opportunity to engage students and experts in the Russian Far East against the backdrop of the increasingly challenged and challenging relationship between Russia and the United States over the Ukraine crisis, which is beginning to affect Russia’s relations with her East Asian neighbors.