On May 31, Denmark’s largest energy company, Ørsted, and the Netherlands’ state-owned GasTerra became the latest victims of Russian natural gas supply termination for refusing to pay for this resource in Russian rubles, as demanded by President Vladimir Putin. In prior weeks, Moscow halted gas... MORE

On May 16–17, with much of the attention in Eurasia still fixated on the Russian-Ukrainian war, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, paid a visit to Tajikistan, where he met with President Emomali Rahmon and senior military officials.... MORE

Ukraine experienced sharp demographic decline even before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale re-invasion earlier this year. The Ukrainian population fell from 52 million in 1993 to just over 41 million by the start of 2022. For that matter, it would have been declining... MORE

Between April 8 and 18, Chatham House conducted its ninth online survey of Belarusian urbanites since August 2020. According to that latest poll, 40 percent of Belarusians do not support Russia’s war with Ukraine, whereas 32 percent do. “Since our sample focuses only on the... MORE

On June 3, the Georgian Ministries of Internal Affairs and Finance announced that all employees of the Border and Customs Department would begin operating each of the country’s physical border checkpoints continuously, in emergency mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Businessfeed.ge, May... MORE

Recently, Turkey stated that it expects a decision on grain exports from Ukraine by sea “in the coming days.” But even after an agreement is reached with Russia, it will take about five weeks to begin the operation, according to İbrahim Kalın, the spokesperson for... MORE

Although Turkey is no longer as dramatically active in the North Caucasus as during the 1990s, when it backed Chechen aspirations for independence, Ankara is quietly expanding its use of soft power mechanisms there. As Russian analyst Andrey Areshov writes, these overtures toward the region—increasingly... MORE

A group of Soviet-built T-62M main battle tanks were recently spotted in an occupied area of Kherson Oblast. The units were equipped with metal grids over the turrets, apparently as some sort of improvised protection (Mil.in.ua, June 5). That account marked a continued trend in... MORE

The preliminary results of the pandemic-delayed 2020 Russian census have now been released—the final and complete data will not be issued until later this year—and they are not sufficient either to cross check the various figures to ensure their reliability or to prevent disputes about... MORE

On June 3, at the Global Security Forum, in Bratislava, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili declared, “I will say without exaggeration that Georgia has always been a leader among Eastern European countries.” He added that Georgia had done its homework on joining the European Union,... MORE