Executive Summary: The BRICS summit, held in Kazan, was met with great fanfare in Russian propaganda. Propagandists hailed it for its “epochal” significance. Moscow commentators promoted the idea that the BRICS summit demonstrated that Russia is not and cannot be isolated in the international arena.... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absence at the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 was not all that surprising and seemed hardly registered by any of the two dozen world leaders who attended. Putin also missed the previous summit in Bali, Indonesia,... MORE

On July 27 and 28, during the Russia–Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, Russian officials signed a number of intergovernmental memorandums and agreements regarding possible future cooperation in nuclear energy with Burundi (Rosatom.ru, July 27), Zimbabwe (Rosatom.ru, July 27) and Ethiopia (Rosatom.ru, July 28). Moreover, Russian... MORE

It has been almost two months since Russia terminated the United Nations–approved deal ensuring the safe export of Ukrainian wheat and corn from its Black Sea ports. And following his most recent meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on September 4 in Sochi, Russian... MORE

Until June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin was apparently quite confident in his power and the lack of any true challenge to it. Anti-Putin activists were successfully squeezed out of the country, the most vociferous were imprisoned or killed. The more measured dissatisfied voices largely... MORE

The low-profile and high-impact meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on August 5 and 6 was never intended to produce a road map for ending the war in Ukraine; neither was it a summit, since the invitations sent to some 40 countries specified the level of... MORE

The weekend mutiny of the Wagner Group, pathetic as it may look in hindsight, is certain to affect Russia’s ability to sustain its aggression against Ukraine and to repel the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. But it will also resonate in a much wider sense. One of... MORE

The protracted deadlock in the trenches of the war in Ukraine is giving way to high-intensity battles, and this escalation instantly generates widespread international resonance, in which expectations of a Ukrainian victory are mixed with concerns about a Russian defeat. Now, the initiative is clearly... MORE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has engaged in vigorous activity in Africa and Latin America over the past six months. He visited Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in Latin America, while in Africa, the Russian minister traveled to South Africa twice, Eswatini, Angola, Eritrea, Mali,... MORE

Executive Summary China`s strategic interests in Sub-Saharan Africa are diverse and, while still being primarily guided by the need to maintain access to locally extracted raw materials, now go beyond this goal. In fact, growing investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and green energy are likely to... MORE