The stakes were high when Presidents Joseph Biden of the United States and Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation held a two-hour, bilateral video-conference on December 7 (see EDM, December 8). Prior to the virtual summit, pro-Kremlin commentaries in Moscow warned of Russia and the... MORE

A new standoff is maturing around the long-standing issue of privatization of real estate in Georgia’s secessionist region of Abkhazia. On November 8, the “president” of Abkhazia, Aslan Bzhania, stated at an official meeting in the city of Tkvarcheli that citizens of Russia should have... MORE

Presidents Joseph Biden of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia held a one-on-one video-conference, on December 7—their fifth direct dialogue (three by telephone, one in person, one by video) in the ten months since Biden took office. The US President initiated both the... MORE

In recent months, Turkey and Iran seized an opportunity to try to reduce their long-running multifaceted tensions. Despite geopolitical and security-related frictions, the bilateral relationship is rosier when it comes to business and people-to-people ties. Iran is among the highest sources of tourists to Turkey... MORE

On November 30, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka gave a 2.5-hour-long interview to Dmitry Kiselev, the director general of Russia’s media giant VGTRK (YouTube, December 2). Subsequent commentary online and in broadcast outlets focused specifically on two of Lukashenka’s statements: 1) his recognition of Crimea as... MORE

Introduction The tiny island nation of Sri Lanka has sought to navigate complex bilateral relationships between the two nearby great powers, China and India. India enjoys both geographic convergence with Sri Lanka, which is in its immediate Indian Ocean periphery, as well as historical, linguistic... MORE

In the past several weeks, relations between Moscow and Washington nosedived, with multiple overlapping potential crises and increasingly toxic rhetoric aggravating an already dangerous situation. The Ukrainian crisis has been simmering to one degree or another since Russia took over Crimea in 2014 and sponsored... MORE

On November 26, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met for the second time since the end of the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020). The meeting took place at the initiative of the Russian government in a similar way to the last trilateral... MORE

On November 15 and 17, Angela Merkel, the outgoing chancellor of Germany, telephoned Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (RBC, November 17). While, on November 14 and 16, Belarus’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had two phone conversations with Josep Borrell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. While Kyiv, Berlin and Paris pursue (with varying degrees of intensity, frantically in Kyiv’s case) a high-level “Normandy” meeting as a goal for its own sake, without conditions or a clear agenda, Moscow is setting maximalist conditions for... MORE