As the Ukraine war has entered its fifth month, and two decades after Iran, Russia and India signed the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) in 2002, Dariush Jamali, head of the Iranian-Russian Port of Solyanka in Astrakhan Oblast, announced that the first transit shipment from... MORE

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) new Strategic Concept, approved at the summit just held in Madrid, strongly emphasizes Russia’s multidimensional threats to the Alliance. By way of response, the Concept singles out the task of deterrence and defense from among the Alliance’s core tasks... MORE

On the Donbas battlefields, Russian troops still strive to advance, but in the global arena of confrontation with the collective West, Russia keeps losing ground. A sequence of heavy blows breached Russian defensive geopolitical positions last week, and Moscow’s attempts at counterstrikes only aggravated the... MORE

Relations between Moscow and Nur-Sultan have been deteriorating since the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine (see EDM, April 5, May 12). In response to unfriendly commentaries and actions by Russia, Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has sought to distance himself from... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. Poland is one of the most engaged Euro-Atlantic actors in the West’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine. The military, societal and humanitarian support Poland continues to provide Ukraine has pushed the two neighboring states to deepen their... MORE

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, was in Kaliningrad on June 20, where he declared that Moscow was preparing a serious response to what he called Lithuania’s (already three-day-long) “transportation blockade” of that Russian exclave (Ren.tv, June 21). Hours earlier, the Russian... MORE

Chinese firms are building railways into the Russian north in order to secure access to the enormous reserves of natural resources there. From one point of view, these efforts are helping Moscow, which itself lacks the funds to build railways in the far-flung areas east... MORE

On June 3, the Georgian Ministries of Internal Affairs and Finance announced that all employees of the Border and Customs Department would begin operating each of the country’s physical border checkpoints continuously, in emergency mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Businessfeed.ge, May... MORE

Recently, Turkey stated that it expects a decision on grain exports from Ukraine by sea “in the coming days.” But even after an agreement is reached with Russia, it will take about five weeks to begin the operation, according to İbrahim Kalın, the spokesperson for... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The unprovoked large-scale Russian military aggression against Ukraine, launched on February 24, is putting at risk the Kremlin’s ambitious plans related to economic exploitation of the Arctic region and the Russian High North. Not only are the Russian... MORE