On September 14–17, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan locked heads in the biggest military conflict between the two sides to date. What started as another border skirmish between the Kyrgyzstani and Tajikistani border guards quickly grew into a major military conflict that raged for three days and... MORE

The global food crisis, increasing transportation costs and Western sanctions on Russia’s transit corridors have led states in the region to seek alternative transportation routes between Europe and Asia. During this period, greater attention has been placed on the Middle Corridor. However, the importance of... MORE

Moscow has abruptly reversed its decision, made as recently as July 2022, to postpone annexation “referendums” in the Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine. The Kremlin had concluded that the prerequisites to minimally credible referendums, even by Russian standards, were not in place in... MORE

Eight years ago, Russia launched a hybrid war against Ukraine with the aim to seize Crimea and wrest six Ukrainian mainland provinces—Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa—away from Ukraine. The Kremlin applied the Tsarist-era designation Novorossiya to that entire territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin... MORE

Russia’s demographic problems, including the extremely high male mortality among working-age groups (Socio.bas-net.by, accessed September 21; Nakanune.ru, August 1) and the declining size of the Russian nation, especially in rural areas where most soldiers come from and opposition to the war is growing (Siberia.Realities, August... MORE

On September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on partial mobilization (Kremlin.ru, September 21) and issued a public statement in which he claimed that the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine are de facto confronting the West (Kremlin.ru, September 21). However, an official state... MORE

On September 3, an estimated 70,000 people gathered around Wenceslaus Square in central Prague to protest against the incumbent government of Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala. The demonstration centered on cost-of-living complaints incurred by increasing energy costs, rapidly rising inflation and perceived overly generous aid... MORE

Oleg Manaev, a seasoned Belarusian sociologist, whose polling firm conducted quarterly national surveys of Belarusians from the early 1990s until 2016, when it was shut down by the Minsk authorities, made a robustly substantiated statement that is at loggerheads with what Belarusian opposition has been... MORE

August is said to be the cruelest month in Russia—one that brings major political upheavals (see Prism, August 18, 1995), embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield (CNN, August 9, 1996) and various assorted catastrophes, both natural and man-made. But one could make an equally strong case for September,... MORE

Despite unprecedented repression by the Russian authorities against anyone who doubts the necessity of President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, more citizens are finding the courage to speak out. At the beginning of September 2022, a group of deputies representing St. Petersburg’s Smolninsky district appealed... MORE