On June 24, the Council of the European Union introduced so-called sectoral sanctions against Minsk. According to the well-informed Russian business daily Kommersant, despite their formidable appearance, the actual strength of these European sanctions is likely to fall short of expectations. Thus, when it comes... MORE

United States President Joseph Biden’s European meetings with the G7 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) earlier this month highlighted some of the extant policy differences between the US and its allies despite the positive PR assaults that sought to minimize them. One well-known... MORE

The post-Geneva changes in Russia’s behavior are not quite going in the direction United States President Joseph Biden had indicated after inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet and deescalate the dangerously high tensions between the two countries. Biden seems to have calculated that the... MORE

Two weeks after the Biden administration waived congressionally mandated sanctions on Nord Stream AG, the company behind the Nord Stream Two pipeline, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the first link of the subsea line is completed and ready for testing (Vesti.ru, June 4). But... MORE

President Joe Biden has landed in Britain on the first leg of a European tour to meet leaders of allied nations in a series of G7, NATO and US-EU summits ending with his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16,... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Along with United States President Joseph Biden greenlighting Gazprom’s Nord Stream Two project, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken giving Ukraine’s concerns the short shrift preparatory to Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin (see Part One in... MORE

Within the last three weeks, a series of decisions by leading Western powers seem to indicate a downgrading of Ukraine on the scale of Western policy priorities. Taken partly in deference to Russia, these decisions risk demotivating Ukrainian reform efforts (hesitant though these are) and... MORE

A German court sentenced on February 24 the alleged “Islamic State leader of Germany” to a lengthy prison sentence. The trial against Salafist preacher Ahmad Abdelaziz Abdullah Abdullah, better known as Abu Walaa, lasted three-and-a-half-years and provides insights into radicalization and Islamic State (IS) recruitment... MORE

On April 16, in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in person and with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who joined by video-link midway through the conversation. The three leaders’ shared goal at this juncture is to defuse the perceived... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron conferred, on March 30, by video-conference on multiple international issues, including the intensification of the “internal conflict in Ukraine” (according to Putin) or “conflict in Ukraine” (Merkel and Macron, though still not... MORE