Executive Summary: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has returned to proposals for extensive constitutional reforms, citing the need for a new constitution to enhance Armenia’s competitiveness amid changing geopolitical conditions. Armenian officials have asserted that the primary focus of constitutional reforms is to restore the... MORE

Executive Summary: Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has asserted that expanding economic integration The population is split between the Russo-centric and “Westernizing” views on independent Belarus, with Belarusians seemingly outgrowing the former while being unable to embrace the latter fully. A clearer view of the two... MORE

Executive Summary: Mass protests in Bashkortostan featured calls for the independence of the Middle Volga republic and have shattered the image that Russia is united behind Putin. These events have convinced Bashkirs and other non-Russians that their time is coming, and Kyiv believes that the... MORE

Kinmen County (金门县) and Lienchiang County (连江县; also referred to as Matsu (马祖)) are a crucial site of activity for cross-Strait relations. Over the last year, Beijing has renewed its calls for using the islands to promote “cross-Strait integrated development (两岸融合发展)” (Taiwan Affairs Office, September... MORE

Russians have long viewed making direct appeals to their supreme leader as their last chance to achieve justice. Today, when ordinary political representation is blocked and participation in most protests remains dangerous, Russian citizens are increasingly writing letters to President Vladimir Putin discussing their personal... MORE

The last quarter of 2022 saw an outburst of Chinese people power. Citizens in as many as 28 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing staged spontaneous protests on their campuses or out on the streets. The underlying cause was Beijing’s draconian lockdown measures, which led... MORE

On November 23, the latest summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was held in Minsk. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan snubbed the meeting over a rift with the Kremlin. The leaders of the five other members—Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan—were present, including... MORE

On November 15, an important event took place in Latvia involving Russian émigrés. A conference was held for the “Free Ingria” movement, where participants met to collaborate on a plan to separate St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, or Ingria, from the Vladimir Putin regime... MORE

Editor’s note: Tables at the end of the PDF version of this article detail a selection of the officials who have been investigated as part of probes into the health and financial sectors this year. On September 27, Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over a... MORE

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has come to recognize the important role of social media in modern conflict and peacetime operations. As such, PLA researchers have begun using the term “social media warfare” (社交媒体战) to describe the extension of non-kinetic military activities onto social media... MORE