In mid-February, as Russians and Afghans mark the 33rd anniversary of the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, both countries are beefing up their forces along the Afghan-Tajikistani border. The trigger has been a renewed deterioration of the security situation in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous... MORE

Population growth trends are destiny only over the long term, scholars have long insisted. But five years ago, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) demographer Nicholas Eberstadt warned in the research study “Russia in Decline” that the country’s demographic decline is imposing increasingly “unforgiving constraints” on the... MORE

French President Emmanuel Macron held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on February 7 and 8, respectively. Overshadowing the talks were Russian forces staging a war scare near Ukraine’s borders. Macron is attempting a solo act,... MORE

On February 1, the first day of the legislative spring session, the Georgian parliament adopted a resolution in support of Ukraine that fell short of mentioning the Russian Federation. The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party had tabled this resolution, which lawmakers adopted with 74 votes... MORE

In mid-December 2021, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received an invitation from his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Trend.az, December 15, 2021), and within a month, he was paying a working visit to Kyiv amidst the security crisis around Ukraine and a large-scale cyberattack on Ukrainian government... MORE

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka annually convenes a meeting devoted to the major tasks of the state border service. During the latest such meeting, on January 24, he unexpectedly responded to Zenon Poznyak’s assertion that Belarus was being militarily occupied by Russia (Pool Pervogo, January 24).... MORE

Even though Russian officialdom continues to insist Moscow has no plans to invade Ukraine, many Russian political commentators in recent weeks have been increasingly aggressive in suggesting that their country can easily defeat and occupy its largest western neighbor and that there is nothing the... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. An itemized list of Ukraine’s latest request for German security assistance has found its way into two major German papers (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, February 5). The Ukrainian embassy and the military attaché’s office in Berlin addressed this... MORE

Last November, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) announced it was creating its own exarchate for Africa and would seek to wrest control of the continent’s bishoprics and parishes away from the Orthodox Church of Alexandria and All Africa (a.k.a. the Greek... MORE

Germany ranks among the top arms-exporting countries worldwide. However, it is withholding lethal security assistance to Ukraine and provides even non-lethal assistance with conspicuous parsimony. Germany’s tripartite coalition government, in office since December 8, 2021, is continuing the policy of the predecessor government of Angela... MORE