Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in mid-August, it has struggled to win friends. Achieving international recognition and acceptance still remains an uphill challenge, subject to its ability and, perhaps, willingness to meet the international community’s expectations. The ultra-conservative Islam the Taliban preaches and... MORE

Recent publications in the Western media about the Russian military buildup along the border with Ukraine (Kyiv Post, October 31) provoked a new round of discussions about whether Moscow intends to resolve the Ukrainian issue by force. This worry was based on satellite images of... MORE

Russia has not entirely avoided contravening international laws and norms since the Geneva summit in mid-June, but its behavior has been an improvement compared to many periods in recent memory. United States President Joseph Biden impressed upon President Vladimir Putin, over the course of their... MORE

Russia’s decision to severely reduce natural gas supplies to Europe before the winter has sent prices skyrocketing, causing the most serious energy crisis in decades. In fact, Europe has never seen such high gas prices. Benchmark wholesale European gas prices have rocketed upward by more... MORE

The recent defeat in the Estonian parliament of a resolution denouncing Moscow’s russification of non-Russian peoples reflects two diametrically opposed trends. On the one hand, the down-vote is a product of the increasing unwillingness of Europe and the West to focus attention on this issue—an... MORE

Since signing the 2010 Strategic Partnership Treaty, Turkey and Azerbaijan have transformed their rhetorically close ties, encapsulated in the oft-repeated slogan “one nation, two states,” into a real military alliance with a casus foederis clause, resembling Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO)... MORE

On November 2, the “Opposition Coalition of Georgia” (OCG), which includes former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) party, held a rally in the Black Sea coastal city of Batumi, where its leaders announced the beginning of a mass protest movement. Demonstrators would demand... MORE

On October 29, Moscow and Chisinau agreed on a conditional resumption of Russian natural gas supplies to Moldova as of October 30. The Russian side had curtailed gas supplies to Moldova by one third in October, and threatened to discontinue the supplies altogether by December... MORE

At the end of October, the Russian Armed Forces staged a military exercise in Crimea to rehearse the defense of the occupied peninsula. The military deployed forces from the Southern Military District/Joint Strategic Command (Obyedinennyye Strategicheskoye Komandovanie—OSK) to the Opuk training ground in Crimea, where... MORE

An epiphenomenon is a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process—so in a way, it is an occurrence whose significance is blown out of proportion. Social life and politics are replete with such epiphenomena. They regularly garner all... MORE