As the United States hastens its drawdown of troops in Iraq before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Joseph Biden, Russia is seeking to fill the developing geopolitical vacuum there. On November 25, following discussions in Moscow with Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, Russia’s top diplomat,... MORE

Last September, the Russian Dossier Center investigative project, funded by opposition leader and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, published a controversial report on the country’s “soft power” policies toward the South Caucasus based on leaks from the Kremlin and Russian special services. The study reveals... MORE

Following its victorious 44-day war (September 27–November 9), Azerbaijan controls approximately one third of the territory of its Upper (“Nagorno”) Karabakh region. The larger part remains under Armenia’s control via the unrecognized republic of Karabakh, although the territory is universally recognized as being a part... MORE

In the euphoria that surrounded Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea six years ago, most Russians were more than willing to spend money to integrate that region into the Russian Federation. But at that time, they had little idea just how much that process would... MORE

On November 24, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strictly condemned Sukhumi and Moscow’s joint approval of a program to create a common socio-economic space uniting breakaway Abkhazia and Russia. Tbilisi slammed it as “another illegal step toward the de facto annexation” of its occupied... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. *To read Part Three, please click here.   Over the past two decades, the main international mechanism for resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s... MORE

On November 26, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus summoned Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Kyzym and presented him with a note of protest, expressing strong concerns over the series of “anti-Belarusian actions” held near Belarus’s embassy in Kyiv and its honorary consulate... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the issue at stake, mediators are expected to be impartial between two parties to a conflict. Yet the Minsk Group’s co-chairing Western governments—those of... MORE

Russian President Vladimir Putin has explained his refusal to congratulate the United States’ President-elect Joseph Biden on the fact that the outcome of the November 3, 2020, election has not yet been officially certified and President Donald Trump has not conceded defeat. A full month... MORE

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) co-rapporteurs in charge of monitoring Georgia, Titus Corlatean (Romania) and Claude Kern (France), called on all Georgian political parties to accept the parliamentary seats they won in the recent elections (first round on October 31, second... MORE