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

Russian diplomacy is testing its rogue-state practices on its Western diplomatic counterparts, and finds them malleable. On November 17, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unilaterally publicized the confidential messages recently exchanged between himself and his German and French counterparts, Heiko Maas and Jean-Yves Le Drian,... MORE

Crisis is brewing yet again in the intrinsically antagonistic relations between Russia and Ukraine, and President Vladimir Putin seeks to harvest richer political dividends from it than he did half a year ago. The apparent buildup of Russian forces near the Ukrainian border follows much... MORE

Togo Suffers First Al-Qaeda-Affiliated Jihadist Attack On November 11, Togo announced that it had suffered the first ever jihadist terrorist attack on its territory. According to the country’s security forces, the attack occurred in Kpendjal, in the town of Sanloaga, along Togo’s northern border with... MORE

For the third time since the beginning of October, Chinese employees of the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft came out to protest. Their grievances include the failures of that company to pay them in a timely fashion, to assist those whose positions have been eliminated,... MORE

In recent months, a series of analytical publications sparked fresh debate in Iran about the status of Iran’s oil and natural gas reserves in the Caspian Sea as well as why it has still not taken greater efforts to exploit those resources. Namely, a piece... MORE

On November 12, Istanbul hosted the eighth summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States (Turkic Council), attended by the leaders of member states Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and of observer states Hungary and Turkmenistan (Turkkon.org, November 12). The summit, dedicated this... MORE

Since the victory of Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan in the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020), Russian commentators have been concerned about Ankara’s efforts to create a union of Turkic states under its aegis. And that alarm has only intensified now that Turkey has established... MORE