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

The Russo-Ukraine war, the extensive Western sanctions against Russia, and the growing possibility that European border states will block east-west transit corridors traversing Russian territory into Europe are having far-reaching implications for the landlocked countries of Central Asia, which have historically relied on road and... MORE

When veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan—the so-called “Afgantsy”—and veterans of the two Russian campaigns in Chechnya returned to their homes, many had a difficult time fitting back into a peaceful life. Some used the military skills they had acquired to engage in various... MORE

Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine, which commenced on February 24 (Kremlin.ru, February 24), pushed the world’s largest advanced economies to introduce several rounds of increasing economic sanctions against the Russian Federation (Meduza, March 8). While the initial impact of those punitive measures seemed... MORE

Russia has revised its war plan multiple times during the, so far, seven-week-long, ill-conceived large-scale invasion of Ukraine, yet it still remains incompatible with both tactical imperatives and political ambitions. The consecutive revisions themselves have been flawed in different ways: if the initial “Blitzkrieg” design... MORE

Over the past two years, deserted cityscapes have become a distressingly common sight, but the images of totally empty thoroughfares in the usually pulsating city of Shanghai are striking (The Paper, April 2). By late March, government authorities reported that Shanghai had recorded 30,000 COVID-19... MORE

International sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its massive re-invasion of Ukraine present both challenges and opportunities for Central Asian economies, which are spread asymmetrically across the region. Turkmenistan is, of course, an outlier case given its insularity and lack of truly verifiable... MORE