On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin met one-on-one with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Moscow. The two leaders discussed important regional and bilateral issues in a meeting that lasted more than three hours. Khan’s trip to Russia, made at Putin’s invitation, was... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Moldova’s leadership realistically views its country as the most fragile among all of Ukraine’s neighbors from the standpoint of national cohesion, resilience, and economic resources. These domestic vulnerabilities compel the government to adopt, in effect, an attitude of... MORE

The long-planned Ukrainian war is going poorly for President Vladimir Putin on many fronts, from the fiercely defended outskirts of Kyiv to the closed doors of McDonald’s restaurants in Moscow. However, the drastic deterioration of Russia’s international standing is likely particularly painful for him. The... MORE

Almost as soon as Russian tanks began their bloody crawl toward Kyiv, debate ensued over whether Chinese leaders had advance knowledge of the Kremlin’s war plans. The broader Chinese foreign policy community was certainly dumbstruck as U.S. warnings of an imminent Russian attack on Ukraine... MORE

Iran’s intervention in the Syrian civil war allowed it to strengthen its foothold in the country. Iran sent numerous foreign militants to Syria, recruited Syrians into Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-aligned militias, and carved out pockets of de facto territorial control for those allied militias.... MORE

Moldova is responding with utmost caution to Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine since late February. The Moldovan leadership, which took over not long ago (see EDM, November 17, 2020 and July 13, 2021), is Western-oriented in every sense, deep faith included. But it lacks the... MORE

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has worried about maintaining transportation links with its non-contiguous exclave of Kaliningrad. These worries intensified when the two countries cutting Kaliningrad off from the rest of the Russian Federation (and Moscow-aligned Belarus)—Poland and Lithuania—became members of... MORE

At the March 1 meeting of the Belarusian Security Council, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka declared that Belarus is not participating in the war in Ukraine. However, adding to the intrigue of the meeting was a map on open display purportedly showing where Belarusian and Russian troops... MORE

Moscow has been extremely chary about reporting combat losses in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, electing instead to make the heads of the federal subjects responsible for doing so at the local level—lest it become immediately obvious to all Russians just... MORE

On March 3, as Russia’s massive re-invasion of Ukraine entered its second week, the Georgian government unexpectedly followed Kyiv’s lead and filed a formal application to join the European Union. In commenting on the announcement, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili declared that Georgia is “a deserving... MORE