Section: CXSSR
A Farewell
Around this time, we try to do a year-in-review article to summarize the good and bad of the men and women who are still rebuilding their lives in the wake of the Soviet shadow; we look back at the road we’ve traveled and look forward to steps in the next year. This year, we are instead coming to the end of our own road. All good things,...
New Report on Armenia and Influence Buying Rocks Council of Europe
“For several years, a network of non-governmental organizations and its connections within the Council of Europe has led a merciless propaganda campaign against Azerbaijan to benefit Armenia.” This is the opening to an explosive report on Armenia, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Azerbaijan, and the occupied territory...
Year in Review: 2016, the Year of Unmarked Change
Compared to the tumult of 2013-2015, 2016 was a year of seemingly relative quiet in Russia’s near abroad. There were no obvious invasions, the wars that had seemed to be ever-present remained that way, and change seemed to come to the periphery alone. This is mistaken. Ukraine’s ongoing war in the East continued to no real resolution,...
Latvia Responds to Western Uncertainty, Russian Aggression By Increasing Special Forces Troops
The unsettled nature of America’s election process and a clear waver in Europe’s will have set the Baltics on edge. First, it was Estonia nervously replying to American presidential candidate Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States should only help those countries that help the United States, by reminding the world...
Russia Endorses Plan to Keep Russia from Shooting Ukrainians (Subject to Revision)
Exciting news from the world of high diplomacy: Russia has endorsed a plan to have separatists in Eastern Ukraine (read: Russians) who have, with Russian (their own) backing tied up the mild laughingstock that is Ukraine’s armed forces in an unwinnable conflict, cease shooting those same Ukrainian forces for a week. Give or take. Subject to...
NATO Threatens Russia With Stern Letter-Writing Campaign to Save Ukraine
Vladimir Putin is doubtless unable to sleep at night: NATO has promised even-greater levels of engagement with Kyiv, as well as some cooperation and communication at the highest levels. Late last week, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg demanded that Russia remove its men and equipment from Eastern Ukraine, a demand that was slightly late...
White House Endorses Return of Azerbaijani Provinces to Baku
The United States has called for Armenia to end its illegal occupation of Azerbaijani provinces surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, something it has tried not to do for years. This is a significant event, even though Washington — one of the chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, the international body pretending to mediate the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh —...
Poland Asks: Does the EU Matter for Anything?
As has been true for almost a decade now, the European Union has seen better days. With the British seriously considering “Brexit” — a British exit from the union — and the various PIIGS dramas submerged but always lurking beneath the surface, the economy in malaise, and the European Central Bank torn between independence and the biggest players...
Ukraine’s PM: I Am My Own Man, I Will Fight Corruption, and Other Things No One Believes
Separating Ukraine’s numerous problems into coherent strands is the work of a lifetime: Does corruption cause economic self-destruction, or economic malaise cause corruption? Why does Ukraine’s economy struggle on when other, similarly-sized countries, equally distant from communism, prosper? Why is “politician” a well-established...
Why the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Matters: A Primer
Last weekend sustained fighting erupted in the Azerbaijani province of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been occupied by Armenia for more than 20 years, and has been the site of a low-intensity conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia for that entire period. By the time the weekend was over, at least three dozen were dead, with both sides laying the...
