On October 7, in the presence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was paying an official visit to the United Kingdom, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Andriy Taran and the UK’s Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace signed a memorandum on enhancing bilateral cooperation in the... MORE

On December 11, project operator Nord Stream 2 AG restarted construction work on the Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline after an almost year-long break. This development, however, does not mean that completion of the 55 billion cubic meter (bcm) gas transit line expansion is... MORE

Turkey’s success in the South Caucasus is echoing across the former Soviet space as well as inside the Russian Federation itself; and not surprisingly, Moscow is worried. Azerbaijan is now openly an ally of Turkey and has Turkish military forces on its territory, something Russia... MORE

On November 20, authorities ceremonially inaugurated the formation of the Forward Command of the United States Army’s V Corps (HQ-F) in its new location, the city of Poznań, in western Poland. The main component of the V Corps’ headquarters will remain in Fort Knox, Kentucky.... MORE

At the December 2 virtual summit of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), President Alyaksandr Lukashenka once again expressed his view that the protest movement in his country is a rebellion masterminded by the West. He called the behavior of Poland and Lithuania particularly... MORE

In the euphoria that surrounded Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea six years ago, most Russians were more than willing to spend money to integrate that region into the Russian Federation. But at that time, they had little idea just how much that process would... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. *To read Part Three, please click here.   Over the past two decades, the main international mechanism for resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s... MORE

Islamic State in Greater Sahara Sets Sights on Burkina Faso Jacob Zenn In late 2019, Islamic State (IS)’s Sahel-based fighters under the leadership of Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi surged ahead of their al-Qaeda rivals in the Group for Supporters of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nasr... MORE

On November 26, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Kyzym and presented him with a note of protest, expressing strong concerns over the series of “anti-Belarusian actions” held near Belarus’s embassy in Kyiv and its honorary consulate... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the issue at stake, mediators are expected to be impartial between two parties to a conflict. Yet the Minsk Group’s co-chairing Western governments—those of... MORE