Read Part One here. This year’s Polish chairmanship barred Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov from entering Poland for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) year-end ministerial meeting. Warsaw cited international sanctions on Lavrov over his role in the 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine... MORE

After some initial caution, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) has become a slavish propaganda tool for President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. Overall, this shift has done nothing to stem the decline in the church’s influence in... MORE

Introduction At the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th Party Congress in late October, five diplomats were selected as full Central Committee members, one of whom will be appointed as China’s next foreign minister (FM) at the National People’s Congress (NPC) next March (Xinhuanet, October 22;... MORE

On November 30, with mass protests only recently suppressed in Beijing and Shanghai and still simmering in Guangzhou and Chongqing, state media notified the “whole party, army and country” that former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who led the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from mid-1989 to... MORE

Introduction Questions about the unity of Italy’s new government on several key foreign policy issues persist, ranging from the extent of its support for Ukraine to its commitment to various European Union institutions. However, on the issue of China, the new government of Prime Minister... MORE

On November 25, right before Russia’s observation of Mother’s Day, President Vladimir Putin met with women who were purportedly mothers of soldiers serving in the “special military operation” in Donbas. In a move not seen since the Russian president met with the mothers of those... MORE

Russia’s devastating invasion of Ukraine this year is not, for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a dramatic watershed or existential crossroads as it has been made out to be. The OSCE has all along been mired in a deep crisis inherent... MORE

The Belarusian press has been actively debating the legacy of Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, who passed away suddenly on November 26 at the age of 65, supposedly from a heart attack. Whereas the state-run media limited itself to dispassionate obituaries, though appreciative of Makei’s... MORE

It has now been roughly a month since the inception of the new Italian government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The new government’s foreign debut took place within the framework of a dense top-level international schedule, which included the COP27 and G20 summits, allowing... MORE

In late November 2022, as protests spread throughout Iran, and amid rising tensions between Baku and Tehran over a range of issues, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared, “We will do everything possible to defend our way of life as well as the secular direction of... MORE