For at least the last 15 years, there has been an intense debate in both Russia and the West about how radical Islam can be defeated. Some argue that force alone is sufficient, but their opponents say that because radical Islam is an ideological project,... MORE

As a number of key countries in the Western Balkans continue to experience serious political volatility, the blame is increasingly falling on Russia’s subversive local activities and an insufficient level of engagement in this region by the European Union and the United States (Shqiptarja.com, January... MORE

By approving additional defense spending in their national budgets for 2017, the Baltic States—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—strongly answered Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Their budget figures, adopted this past December, mean not only greater resources for their own national defense, but also a significant step forward... MORE

Chinese President Xi Jinping was this year’s star guest at the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 17–20), where the mood of the traditional crowd of successful entrepreneurs and high-flying politicians was far from jubilant. The shadow of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump... MORE

Mukhammad Khangoshvili, a 24-year-old inhabitant of the village of Duisi, in Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, was killed, on November 7, 2016, in a bombing of the Islamic State’s (IS) positions in the Iraqi city of Mosul (News.ge, November 8, 2016). Khangoshvili previously served as a bodyguard... MORE

This past fall, Ukraine came under a media influence campaign that agitated for reinstating economic ties with Russia. Over the course of September­–December 2016, several Ukrainian websites published a series of news stories detailing calls by various domestic enterprises and regional and municipal communities to... MORE

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Belarus’s strategic position has become riskier and more acutely endangered, a fact the government in Minsk undoubtedly understands quite well. At the same time, Western governments, especially Belarus’s neighbors like Poland and the Baltic States, are watching... MORE

Following months of negotiations, on January 11, Russia and Georgia finally concluded a deal over the transit of Russian natural gas to Armenia via Georgia. According to the new, two-year-long contract, Russia plans to deliver 2.0–2.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to Armenia within... MORE

Incoming presidents put in place their own teams of subordinates and government functionaries; this is true for Uzbekistan as much as for the rest of the world. Since Shavkat Mirziyaev was sworn in as Uzbekistan’s new head of state on December 14, 2016, he has... MORE

In the run-up to his inauguration this week (January 20), President-elect Donald Trump has been saying all the right words Moscow would seem to want to hear. The Kremlin openly supported Trump’s recent characterization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as “obsolete.” Russian President... MORE