Introduction As the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approaches its 20th Party Congress, which begins on October 16, General Secretary Xi Jinping is set to continue his run as core leader (People’s Daily, August 31). Throughout his tenure, Xi, who is... MORE

Kuomintang (KMT) Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia led a delegation to China in August, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the extensive live-fire exercises that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted around Taiwan following U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit (Focus Taiwan, August 28; Republic of... MORE

Introduction At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting in late July, which included China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, People’s Republic of China (PRC) State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi exhorted member states to uphold the “Shanghai Spirit” (上海精神,... MORE

Iraq’s request to purchase Dassault Rafale fighter jets from France will raise some eyebrows in Washington. Paris is eyeing the Middle Eastern weapons market and has signed significant agreements with Egypt and the UAE—and now Iraq. In a time of growing competition in the 4.5th... MORE

On August 20, two Russians and a Ukrainian were arrested in Albania as they tried to enter a defunct military factory in the city of Gramsci. According to Albanian authorities, the detainees were trying to film the factory, and one of them, Mikhail Zorin, sprayed... MORE

The murder of Darya Dugina—the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, who many view as the instigator for some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive and expansionist ideas—in Moscow on August 20 has sparked three sets of questions: Was her father the real target? Who was... MORE

As anticipated well ahead of the curve (see EDM, July 21, 22), Russia has missed the September 11 target date for staging annexation “referendums” in Ukraine’s occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Moscow and the local authorities it installed in both regions waited until early September... MORE

Musings of two Belarusian historians, Yury Shevtsov and Alexander Bely, symbolize the current condition of Belarusians’ cultural divide. Both consider the 1596 emergence of the Uniate Church, preserving the Eastern rite and discipline but submitting to papal authority, an important hallmark in Belarusian history. Yet,... MORE

The Russo-Ukrainian War, now entering its seventh month, has dramatically altered the dynamics of intra-Chechen politics and, rather unexpectedly, brought the half-forgotten issue of Chechnya’s difficult, often adversarial relations with Moscow to the fore. Even preceding the Kremlin’s re-invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022,... MORE

In the USSR’s final years, Soviet propagandists and analysts routinely attacked the works of Western writers as being those of “bourgeois falsifiers,” arguing that their books and articles were fictitious because the ideas presented were at odds with Marxism-Leninism and Moscow’s position on most subjects.... MORE