Executive Summary: Moscow officials and churchmen fear Chisinau will follow Kyiv and ban the Russian Orthodox Church in Moldova. Both they and pro-Moscow groups there are using concerns about that in their campaign against the re-election of Moldova’s pro-Western leader. Russian fears are not only... MORE

Executive Summary: Russian President Vladimir Putin has again threatened Western countries with nuclear retaliation, claiming that Ukraine’s use of Western weapons means direct participation of North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries in his war against Ukraine. Western states should respond to this the same way they... MORE

(Part One) Executive Summary: NATO’s outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has called for maximizing military assistance to Ukraine to change Russia’s calculus and bring Moscow to the negotiating table. This scenario spells, however, a territorial compromise at Ukraine’s expense rather than victory in war. Stoltenberg... MORE

Executive Summary: As veterans from Moscow’s war in Ukraine return to Russia and are lauded as the “new elite,” crime rates are drastically increasing, creating a surge in violence across Russian society. The Kremlin’s loss of the monopoly on violence, combined with reduced numbers of... MORE

Executive Summary: Moscow is focusing on the Åland Islands as a potential target in the event of war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now that the West has taken new steps to boost the defense of Gotland and the Svalbard islands. This Russian... MORE

Executive Summary: Russian state-run media outlets, such as RT, have transformed their disinformation campaigns in the West to adapt to local situations, exerting subtle influence on domestic media to conduct a more covert operation. Moscow is increasingly utilizing embedded propaganda by funding foreign media voices,... MORE

Executive Summary: Russian President Vladimir Putin was propelled into power amid a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia in the 1990s. His tactics to combat this “war on terror” are being used today against Ukraine. In the 1990s, Russian propaganda and a boost to... MORE

Executive Summary: NATO’s outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, recently offered his first retrospective assessment of the Alliance’s Ukraine policy. Retrospective assessments recognize that the United States and its major allies failed to deter Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While member states may have... MORE

Executive Summary: Russia aims to increase its armed forces to 1.5 million personnel, largely to justify higher military spending. The Kremlin, however, faces difficulties achieving this target, as the war in Ukraine continues to cause tremendous casualties, rapidly depleting Russia’s supply of manpower.  Despite stable... MORE

Executive Summary: The Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute has always been about both Karabakh and regional transit routes, which now center on Zangezur. Addressing this problem is far more difficult than Karabakh because it directly involves not just Baku and Yerevan but all outside powers—including Russia, Iran, Türkiye,... MORE