While President Xi Jinping has often been criticized by Western politicians, as well as intellectuals inside and outside of China, for restoring quasi-Maoist values, he has at least been consistent in his conservative agenda. On foreign policy, he has never strayed from the Chinese Communist... MORE

By 2023, Russia’s budgetary planning for civilian and military space programs was presumed to have changed compared with previous years due to the breakdown in space cooperation with the United States and Europe (with the exception of the International Space Station); the failures of Russia’s... MORE

On January 22, Belarusians identifying as pro-Western (as opposed to those who identify as Russo-centric) celebrated the 160th anniversary of the so-called Kastus Kalinowski uprising on Belarusian soil. Thus, Belarusian émigrés organized a performance in front of the Russian embassy in Warsaw in commemoration. The... MORE

During a press conference on January 18, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised the Georgian government for its decision not to join the Western sanctions regime against Russia. However, Tbilisi considered this an embarrassment, as it rejects any formal cooperation with Russia. On this, Lavrov... MORE

On December 21, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part, via videoconference, in the commissioning ceremony for the Kovykta gas field, the largest in Eastern Siberia (Kremlin.ru, December 21, 2022). The field’s recoverable reserves are estimated at 1.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, but... MORE

In the 12th month of Russia’s war against Ukraine, analysts close to the Kremlin are increasingly sounding the alarm that the Russian people should prepare for a long-term conflict. At the same time, in the past, such statements were always accompanied by propaganda narratives about... MORE

The prolonged political instability in Bulgaria will continue to impact critical energy security decisions and maintain the country’s status as Russia’s best client in Europe. Bulgaria, currently the third-largest buyer of Russian oil in the world, is heading for another round of general elections on... MORE

After fighting a delaying game for more than a decade and assuming as recently as December 2022 that it had come up with a compromise that would conceal its essentially abject defeat, the government of the Republic of Tatarstan surrendered to Moscow’s demands across the... MORE

Since February 2022, the Kremlin has been trying to clearly present the purpose and thinking behind its all-out aggression against Ukraine. The Russian authorities’ narratives began with President Vladimir Putin’s declarations of “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine together with punishment for Kyiv’s “decommunization.” However, this... MORE

Earlier this month, People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP), ran an article by its Washington correspondent entitled “America’s Intractable Illicit and Pharmaceutical Drug Abuse Issue” (People’s Daily, January 6, 2023). The piece claims that “more and more American adolescents are... MORE