On May 9, the European Parliament, with 537 votes, overwhelmingly approved the European Commission’s (EC) proposal to suspend import duties, anti-dumping duties and safeguards on Ukrainian exports to the European Union for another year (Europarl.europa.eu, May 9). The liberalization of trade, which previously was unanimously... MORE

As every cloud has a silver lining, the current situation in Belarus is no exception. Admittedly, this is hard to prove, but four recent events may have cause for some restrained optimism. First, on April 12, during his visit to Hungary, Belarusian Foreign Minister Sergei... MORE

Introduction On February 14, China’s senior-most diplomat, Politburo member and Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi embarked on a week-long tour of Europe, which culminated with a stop in Russia that paved the way for General Secretary Xi Jinping’s... MORE

On February 13, the groundbreaking ceremony was held in Baku for the largest thermal power station (TSP) yet to be built in Azerbaijan with a planned capacity of 1,280 megawatts (MW) (Apa.az, February 13). The project’s total value is estimated at around $400 million, which... MORE

The year 2023 began with a series of alarming signs for the already troubled relationship between Hungary and Ukraine. Speaking to conservative-minded international journalists on January 26, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reportedly compared Ukraine to Afghanistan, characterizing the war-torn country as a “no man’s... MORE

*Read Part One here. The recently established military relationship between South Korea and Poland is a multidimensional phenomenon, reaching beyond security in its traditional meaning. In fact, large-scale arms contracts are almost always politicized and followed or accompanied by intensified economic ties. Certainly, in the... MORE

In December 2022, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary and Romania signed an agreement to build a strategic partnership in the field of green energy development and transmission (President.az, December 17, 2022). According to the document’s text, the four countries plan to work together in developing a 1,195-kilometer... MORE

On October 24, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev arrived in Georgia for a one-day working visit. The abrupt nature of Aliyev’s visit was characterized as “strange” and “mysterious” by many experts in Tbilisi (Civil.ge; Netgazeti.ge, October 24). Indeed, the brevity of the visit and its format... MORE

Dmitry Gurnevich of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) analyzed the biographies of Belarus’s top-ranking military officers and concluded that many of them were either born in Russia, graduated from Russian military academies, or both (Svaboda, November 3). Specifically, out of the nine top military leaders,... MORE

On October 14, the Hungarian government and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán launched a nationwide survey regarding the European Union’s sanctions policy against Russia. The survey asked Hungarian citizens to share their opinions on the energy sanctions introduced by the European bloc in response to Russia’s... MORE