A close examination of the Russian government’s public positions on the impending Taliban takeover of Afghanistan provides a revealing picture of Moscow’s approach to conflicts abroad and of its posture in Central Asia more specifically. While reveling in Washington’s failure in Afghanistan (TASS, July 16,... MORE

On July 20, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan paid a working visit to Moscow, upon the invitation of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin (President.az, July 20). This was the second working visit of the Azerbaijani head of state to Russia this year, following his earlier... MORE

On July 20, Belarus’s President Alyaksandr Lukashenka conducted a foreign policy revision meeting. That same day, the Roundtable of Democratic Forces, a group headed by Yury Voskresensky, published a draft for a new constitution; and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, widely seen in the West as the leader... MORE

The Japanese government’s National Institute for Polar Research (NIPR) released four reports so far this month (July 2021) outlining Tokyo’s view that Japan should be among the countries allowed to exploit the oil and natural gas resources lying below the surface in Antarctica and to... MORE

Perhaps not surprisingly, the development of railways in Central Asia and of shipping routes and pipelines across the Caspian Sea are routinely characterized as elements of geopolitical competition among major outside powers, including Russia, China, Turkey, the United States, Iran and India (see EDM, February... MORE

For the last several years, China has made use of its own private military companies (PMC) to guard Chinese industrial sites and transportation networks across Central Asia that it views as essential to its broader “One Belt, One Road” (more recently known as the Belt... MORE

Polls taken over the last decade show that Russians view their country’s space program as second only to victory in World War II as the key “reference point” in their history. At the same time, it is seen as a symbol of authoritarian modernization their... MORE

On June 24, Russia’s state-owned oil transit system operator Transneft announced that hydrocarbon producers Rosneft and Surgutneftgaz had not reserved any pipeline volumes for transporting oil to the Belarusian refinery Naftan for the third quarter of 2021 (TASS, June 24). Transneft’s announcement did not come... MORE

Infections and deaths from COVID-19 are again reaching critically high levels in the Russian Federation even as such indicators are mostly declining elsewhere in Western countries, and especially in the United States. Faced with this troubling reality, various Russian commentators and even senior officials have... MORE

The summit in Geneva between Presidents Joseph Biden of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia was supposed to stabilize bilateral relations by demarcating areas and issues each side deemed so important that any hostile incursion would encounter a strong response. In the present-day... MORE