Latest Articles about Foreign Policy
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Russia Abandons Moldovan Clients, Will Deal With the New Pro-Western Government (Part One)
Russia has done almost nothing to help Igor Dodon’s Socialist Party and other Russophile forces in Moldova’s recent parliamentary elections. The Kremlin and its propaganda apparatus kept silent; and the Russian government offered no economic handouts or promises to Moldova’s Socialist-backed government during the electoral... MORE
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Amidst Taliban Gains, Russian Strategic Assets Threatened in Central Asia
On July 8, a high-ranking Taliban delegation came to Moscow and held talks with Zamir Kabulov, a former ambassador to Kabul, the Kremlin’s special envoy on Afghanistan and a department chief in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Apparently, the Taliban representatives hoped to meet Russian... MORE
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Belarus’s Political Crisis as a Theater of the Absurd
On July 6, a Belarusian court handed a 14-year prison sentence to Victor Babariko (BelTA, July 6), perhaps President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s strongest political rival. Babariko was arguably best positioned to actually win a would-be free and fair presidential election against the incumbent, if he had... MORE
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Iranian-Azerbaijani Relations Under the New Raisi Administration
Despite a rapprochement of sorts in 2019 (see EDM, March 20, 2019), Iran’s relations with the Republic of Azerbaijan faced new strains and challenges during the final year of Hassan Rouhani’s presidency (set to end on August 3, 2021), especially following the outbreak of the... MORE
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Russian Energy Companies Halt Oil Supplies to Naftan Refinery in Belarus Because of US Sanctions
On June 24, Russia’s state-owned oil transit system operator Transneft announced that hydrocarbon producers Rosneft and Surgutneftgaz had not reserved any pipeline volumes for transporting oil to the Belarusian refinery Naftan for the third quarter of 2021 (TASS, June 24). Transneft’s announcement did not come... MORE
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Putin’s Predictable Syrian Compromise Amidst Hostile Russian Behavior
It took a telephone call from United States President Joseph Biden last Friday (July 9) afternoon to convince President Vladimir Putin to abandon his “principled” stance on upholding Syria’s sovereignty and to grant consent to keeping the corridor for delivering humanitarian aid to the rebel-controlled... MORE
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NATO-Georgia: A Pause in the Integration Process?
In early July, James Appathurai, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, held a series of top-level meetings in Georgia. The Georgian authorities greeted their guest from Brussels warmly and with much fanfare. President Salome Zurabishvili awarded Appathurai with... MORE
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Moscow Says US Waging Biological War Against Russia
Infections and deaths from COVID-19 are again reaching critically high levels in the Russian Federation even as such indicators are mostly declining elsewhere in Western countries, and especially in the United States. Faced with this troubling reality, various Russian commentators and even senior officials have... MORE
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Despite Western Warnings, Russia Moves Closer to China
The perception of China as a growing and global threat has become a bipartisan issue in Washington that more or less seamlessly persisted through the handover of power from the previous presidential administration to the current one. Indeed, over the past several months, the United... MORE
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Europe’s Sanctions and Belarus: A Hammer and the Nail
After the introduction of sectoral sanctions by the European Union (see EDM, June 30), Minsk suspended its membership in the Eastern Partnership initiative as well as in the Readmission Agreement with the EU. Belarus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also recommended that the head of the... MORE