In early April, high-level Italian and French delegations traveled separately to Azerbaijan to discuss cooperation in the energy sector, including natural gas exports and “green” electricity generated from Caspian-basin wind (Minenergy.gov.az, April 2, 8). The twin visits occurred against the background of mounting anxieties about... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine pushed the world’s largest, most advanced economies to introduce several rounds of economic sanctions against the Russian Federation (Meduza, March 8). Russia’s energy sector (a key pillar of... MORE

On April 27, Russia’s Gazprom completely suspended natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria under long-term contracts that were supposed to be valid through the end of 2022. The move was explained by Gazprom as a necessity, as the Russian gas importers in both countries... MORE

The deadlocked war with Ukraine has pushed Russia into an irreconcilable dilemma: it can neither accept reality nor keep denying it. This contradiction can be seen both in the official discourse on the unfolding disaster and the societal response to it. As one example, rampant... MORE

Introduction On March 15, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg called on China to withdraw its support for Russia and to condemn its “brutal” invasion of Ukraine (NATO, March 15). The next day, the nationalistic state media outlet Global Times issued a... MORE

The Kremlin’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, launched on February 24, became a game changer for the Russian space program. Western sanctions, adopted in response to the war, have thrown Russia’s space industry into turmoil: previous rounds of sanctions were painful, but they only limited Russia’s... MORE

The roles of the Central Asian and the South Caucasus regions in facilitating economic relations between the European Union and East Asia—particularly in the fields of energy, trade, and transportation—have been growing in importance over the last few months (Report.az, April 6). Amidst the current... MORE

By the time news of the Russian re-invasion of Ukraine became known in Moscow in the early morning of February 24, 2022, it was already afternoon in Siberia and the Urals. Residents of cities such as Irkutsk, Omsk and Yekaterinburg were the first to take... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. After Russia’s President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24 (Kremlin.ru, February 24), the Western economies introduce several rounds of increasingly harsh economic sanctions against the Russian Federation (Meduza, March 8). So far, Russia’s non-renewable... MORE

The Russo-Ukrainian war has cast doubt on the sustainability of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative’s (BRI) “Northern Corridor” because of mounting Western sanctions on this overland route’s key links—Russia and Belarus (see EDM, April 8, 18). The growing vulnerability of the Northern Corridor, which... MORE